


Bleed Like Me

by WatchMyFavesSuffer



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hospitalization, Numbness, Rehab, Self-Harm, Therapy, Whump, big cw, if you've read my stuff you know the deal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchMyFavesSuffer/pseuds/WatchMyFavesSuffer
Summary: A gift for Hicccup, based on the following prompt:Chuck leaves, and is gone for months. No trace. Zip, zero, nada, nothing to follow, because he knows the crew, knows how they think, and knows how to cover his tracks so even Blair can’t find him. Comes back, turns out he went to rehab for self harm, because after years, it was getting to the point that he was scaring himself.Tl;dr: Everyone's garbage fave goes to rehab for self-harm, and the gang comes together to find him.(Named after the song by Garbage.)
Relationships: Bart Bass & Chuck Bass, Chuck Bass & Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass & Lily van der Woodsen, Chuck Bass & Serena van der Woodsen, Dan Humphrey & Chuck Bass, Nate Archibald & Chuck Bass
Comments: 49
Kudos: 31





	1. The Disappearance of Charles Bartholomew Bass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hicccup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hicccup/gifts).



> Please please please heed the warnings for semi-graphic descriptions of self-harm! Don't trigger yourself, it gets kinda rough in this chapter!
> 
> Also, in terms of timing, this is vaguely set during late season 5? It's going to get a little canon-divergent, though.

Chuck runs away because it’s what he knows best.

The plan takes shape slowly. A dark part of him says no one will even go looking for him— but deep down, he knows his friends would never let him just disappear. He had to cover his tracks if he didn’t want to be found.

Can’t take the limo—Blair would bribe or intimidate or otherwise put pressure on Arthur, his driver, until he spilled. Can’t use his credit cards— any private eye worth his salt would trace him immediately. So he takes out cash, a thousand or so at a time, over a few months. He hides the money in the same spot he hides his kit— in a drawer among his more ostentatious ties (the ones Nate would never come by to borrow, so there’s no chance he’ll stumble upon it.) He looks up prices for bus tickets (Chuck Bass, _riding the bus._ My God, what was the world coming to?) He figures riding the Greyhound in a three-piece suit would be a touch conspicuous, so he buys new clothes: sweaters and long-sleeved button-downs and chinos. He can’t quite bring himself to buy jeans, but he goes as casual as he can bear.

He isn’t sure he’s going to go through with it, not at first. Half of him doesn’t want anything to change, just wants to stay here and dig himself deeper and deeper into the hole he’s in. And that half keeps living life as normal. But he keeps hiding cash, and looking at bus tickets, and finding himself dialing the number he looked up, though he always throws his phone aside before hitting “call”. It’s comforting to have the option— if things go too far, he can run.

The place he’d found was nice; it came recommended by trustworthy-seeming people. Nothing too fancy, just in case he’d been less careful than he thought and they started scouring the luxury rehabs.

He considers telling Lily. She was the best bet on the Upper East Side if you’re looking to keep a secret. And, if someone knows, maybe he’ll be more likely to see it through. But he can’t imagine admitting to her how out of control things had gotten. The shame prickles and crawls up the back of his neck just thinking about it. He rubs his arm absentmindedly through his suit sleeve.

He looks at the website for the rehab center for the hundredth time, pouring himself glass after glass of 18-year single-malt. It’s late— he should sleep, or else stop stalling and call the rehab already. He pours himself another finger of scotch instead.

His phone chirps: a Gossip Girl blast. He doesn’t even know why he still subscribes to these; they only make him feel worse. _Spotted: Blair and Lonely Boy arriving at an opening reception at the Whitney. S. arrived, fashionably late, as usual. Conspicuously absent was one Chuck Bass. We know he isn’t quite a patron of the arts, but it isn’t like our bad boy to miss a party this big. If you see him, drop me a line. xoxo, Gossip Girl._

Attached was a photo of Blair, laughing next to Dan. Even in a surreptitious cell phone photo, her smile is radiant. Her hair is swept up, and she’s wearing dangling emerald earrings and a dark green gown. It’s Zac Posen, if Chuck’s instinct for couture is as sharp as he thinks. He imagines tracing his thumb down the nape of her bare neck, like he used to do when they were together. Dan looks…well, _happy_. Out of place in a last-season Armani suit Rufus had probably bought him, but happy. He’s gesturing toward a huge sculpture and looking back at a grinning Blair, clearly in the middle of telling some nerdy joke.

Chuck _aches_ to be there with them. Not just to see Blair, to maybe brush her arm with his hand, to earn a smile from her. He missed being with people, any people at all. He barely leaves the house these days, except for work. He’s so _far away_ from everyone. Even when Nate comes by to knock back a few drinks and talk, Chuck feels like he’s trying to reach across an ocean, cold and roaring and bruise-colored, just to touch him.

But who was he kidding? Even if he had enough energy and focus to go out and see people, it’s not like they’d be happy to see him. When was the last time he laughed with someone?

Lately, he spends his evenings wandering his suite, from medicine cabinet to bar cart to his top drawer to dig out his kit. He’s exhausted all the time, no matter how much sleep he gets. His mind got stuck in these ruts, where any minor mistake or uncomfortable memory set his thoughts tearing down a circular path, _stupid worthless garbage unlovable garbage worthless,_ on and on until he wants to reach under his skin and scrape his insides bloody and blank, until no trace of his identity remains.

The feeling of being alone— being purely, horribly alone, creeps up inside him, threatening to suffocate him. He stand up suddenly, shutting his laptop and taking off for his room. He’s on autopilot now: heads straight to the dresser, taking off his suit jacket and tossing it onto the bed. Undoing his left cuff link, rolling the sleeve up above the elbow. He digs around in the drawer until his fingers close around it: a velvet jewelry box. It used to hold a necklace that belonged to his mother (or so Bart said, who knew if it was true? Still, something felt very poetic about it.) Inside: bandages, gauze, a lighter, antibacterial cream, and a box of ten ice-tempered stainless steel razor blades, paper-thin and wickedly sharp. He fishes one out and presses it into his bicep. The first drop of blood beads up to the surface, and he relaxes. He sighs audibly, his head easing back as he digs in deeper and drags the blade across his skin.

He usually tries not to cut on his arms— too easy for people to see— so most of his scars are littered around his legs and his lower abdomen. But lately, when the need hits, he doesn’t have time to think. He has to cut, has to bleed, _now_ , or else the sadness will destroy him. Besides, the only people to see him shirtless these days are strangers he takes back to the Empire for the night, who don’t care enough to ask where the marks come from.

He goes in for a second cut, and a third. Each slice delivers pain sharp enough to drown out his thoughts. Stripes of red bloom on his upper arm, the cuts flourishing like open mouths. He wasn’t paying attention, and the last one is deeper than usual. He scrambles for the gauze when the blood starts to run past the hollow of his elbow and snakes its way down his forearm. The gauze turns from white to pink to red, and the blood keeps spilling. He just stands and watches it. The river of red runs just a bit faster with each pump of his heart.

(It’s nice to remember that he has a heart at all.)

Before the flow of blood finally slows to a trickle, it occurs to him, not for the first time, that this… _thing_ of his, this little habit, could kill him. And he’s not 100% sure he’d mind.

Maybe that’s why he’s so scared to take off: he’s afraid he’ll never make it to the rehab center. If he really covers his tracks well, he could get off the Greyhound at some bleak nowhere of a town, secure in his knowledge that no one could find him, then check into a motel with a baggie of painkillers and his kit and— well, maybe they’d find someone to I.D. the body. But then again, maybe not. Maybe he’d remain anonymous, and it would be as though he had never existed at all.

He washes the cuts, but he’s too tired and just doesn’t care enough to put the antibacterial on them or bandage them right. He throws some more gauze on them and tapes it down. He sighs; his chest feels less tight, and his thoughts are going a bit slower. He tosses his clothes into a corner and falls into his bed in just a white undershirt and underwear. Scars peek out from beneath the hem of his boxers, and down his left arm. He traces them idly with a finger as he lays back.

He’s not quite drunk, but he’s warmed up enough with booze that he falls asleep without much trouble. He dreams, as he often does, of his Uncle Jack. His voice, thick with sadistic joy as he said “She’s seen who you really are. And no one could love that.”

Except, in the dream, instead of being in the penthouse of the Empire, they’re on opposite ends of a long hallway. Chuck is trying to run towards him— to hit him? to chew him out? to convince Jack he was wrong about him?— but his legs don’t work, and the hallway keeps getting longer. And he tries to yell after him, but his lungs are emptied of air and his vocal cords aren’t working.

He wakes up sweating and gripping his sheets. He sighs and rolls over. His alarm clock shows it’s just shy of 6:00 am. He considers rolling back over and going to sleep. His cuts are scabbing over— he can tell by the hangover of pain, that next-day soreness that feels almost as good as the initial cut. Twinges of pain would follow him all day, a small reminder of his secret rendezvous with his razor blades. It would keep him centered, remind him he was here and alive and still capable of feeling something other than a dull ache.

So he gets up and showers and gets ready for work. He winces, breathing hard between bared teeth, as the hot water stings his half-healed cuts. It’s something like ecstasy and something like agony and his brain is full and dizzy with it.

He’s glad for the distraction; his dream had put him in a gloomy, reflective mood. He plays bits and pieces of memories in his head, the greatest hits of his masochistic past. It wasn’t even the big moments that stuck in is mind this morning: the times when his father told him to his face what a disappointment he was or when he pushed away people he loved in the most horrible ways he could conceive. It was the little things: the curt, cold, utterly disinterested way his father ended a phone call. The feeling of Jack’s hand on the collar of his coat, pulling his intoxicated, limp body out of the limo with a look of disdain on his face. The way Lily looked at him, tears welling, when he was being senseless and cruel. That look that says she knows he can be better, even when Chuck knows she’s wrong, that this is all he is.

He wraps a hand around his upper arm in the limo to the office, letting his fingers dig into last night’s cuts. Anything to keep his mind off the mass of memories buzzing in his ears like a swarm of insects. He’s a little startled at how his hand nearly wraps all the way around his bicep: he’d been losing weight lately, his stomach tied in knots most of the time.

The twinge of pain isn’t keeping the thoughts from flooding in. The look on Serena’s face whenever she used to see Chuck around the Palace— complete disgust, even fear. Like he was a wild animal, rabid and uncontrolled and dirty. _That_ was who he was. Who was he kidding, showing up to work with his custom suit and his briefcase and pretending to be a responsible adult? Pretending to be a _person?_

The elevator operator opens the door. “Good morning, Mr. Bass.”

“Hm?” He hadn’t recognized his name, a random collection of sounds floating somewhere outside the mess that was his body. “Oh, yes, good morning, Dave.” He fakes a smile.

He feels adrift as he heads to his corner office, faking another smile for his secretary. He feels slightly outside himself, like everything is happening just a few feet away from where it should. It’s like a bad acid trip, and he can feel panic rising, adrenaline-bitter and metallic.

Luckily, he had recently stashed another box of razor blades in his desk drawer, under a pile of papers. He keeps his breath as even as he can manage as he slips a blade out of the box and hides it in his wallet. He heads to the executives’ bathroom. He locks himself in a stall and braces his legs against the door. No time to go through the usual routine; he just needs to get this over with. He unfastens a few buttons on his button-down, pulls up his undershirt and slices low on his stomach until he feels himself return to his body. His breathing comes back from the brink of hyperventilation, and some of the weight on his chest seems to lift. He realizes he didn’t bring bandages or gauze with him. He wads up some toilet paper and dabs at the gashes.

He stares at the mess of cuts, which are scattered and criss-crossing, unlike his usual parallel lines. He waits for the flow of blood to stop and hastily buttons and tucks his shirt back in. No time to worry about keeping the cuts clean.

He has a meeting with his PR firm at 8:30, and maybe being around other people will pull him out of this cloud he’s in. He wishes he could call Serena, or Nate, or Eric, and just talk to them, the way they used to, about their jobs or the parties they were planning. His mind supplies him with plenty of memories to deter him from picking up the phone:

Serena’s voice: _No wonder you’re friendless, and girlfriendless, and even your own father expects the worst from you._

Blair’s _: He’s something you’ll never be: a human being._

Nate’s: _Stay the hell away from me, Chuck._

When the PR guys enter the boardroom, he stands, offering his hand. The woman across the table from him lets out a sound halfway between a yelp and a gasp.

She clears her throat. “Mr. Bass, I’m afraid I forgot to get you those printouts. Can you come with me?” Her face is pinched and panicked, but her tone is cool. "Printouts" is clearly code for something having gone horribly wrong. He tries not to let his face show his confusion.

He clears his throat. “Ah, yes. Apologies,” he offers to the PR people.

The woman rushes him out the door as fast as she can in her Louboutins.

They turn a corner. “Excuse me, sir, I hate to— well, to strain the limits of propriety here, but I didn’t want you to embarrass yourself. Potentially, that is. Not to imply that you _were_ embarrassing yourself in there, far from it, but—“

“Just say what you want to say.” He runs a hand through his hair in exhaustion.

“Well, Mr. Bass, it would appear that you are, uh, well you’re _bleeding_.”

He looks down and sure enough, the cuts from this morning have split open, and a soft bloom of red, like a watercolor, is spreading across his silk-blend shirt. He hastily buttons his jacket to hide the bloodstain.

“Excuse me,” he says suddenly. He heads down the hallway and disappears around a corner.

He gets the legal department on the phone. “Hypothetically speaking, who would have to know if a CEO was taking a leave of absence?”

* * *

**Three Days Later**

“Hey Blair, have you seen Chuck?” Serena asks, scrolling on her laptop.

Blair stiffens at the mention of his name. “No. Of course not. Why?”

“Gossip Girl says he hasn’t been spotted in three days. As far as she knows, he hasn’t left the Empire.”

Blair frowns. “Unless both of his legs are broken, there’s no way he hasn’t left the house in three days. Have you asked Nate?”

Serena’s phone rings. She checks the caller ID.

“Speak of the devil,” she says, forcing a smile, but with an uneasy edge in her voice.

“Hey, Nate.”

A pause.

“No, I haven’t seen Chuck.” Serena throws a worried look at Blair, who turns away from doing her makeup in the mirror. She grips the armrest of her chair.

Another pause.

“Well, did you call his office at Bass Enterprises?”

“Oh.” Serena anxiously knots the long necklace she’s wearing around her finger. “Nate, how quickly can you come over?”

* * *

They sit Nate down. Blair is stalking across the room, like a detective in an interrogation room, the full force of her intelligence and love for Chuck focused, like a lighthouse beam, on him.

“I hadn’t seen him in a while so I was going to stop by the Empire and ask if he wanted to get breakfast.”

“And he wasn’t there?”

“Nope, and he’s not answering his phone.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Maybe a week ago? He seemed busy lately.”

“No one on Gossip Girl has seen him, not even at the office, for three days.”

“Maybe he took an impulsive vacation,” Nate offers.

“No, he keeps his passport in the safe at my mom’s place. She would have told me if he came by to pick it up.” Serena chews the corner of her lip.

Blair falls silent, her face bloodless and white. She tries to stop herself, but she can’t help but picture Chuck strung out on some ratty couch downtown, or bleeding in an alley, or on some sleazy coke dealer’s boat, or too drunk to remember where he is, searching frantically for his phone to call for help—

“If no one comes up with an idea of where he is in the next ten seconds, I’m calling the police,” she says.

“You know you don’t want to do that.” Nate says, forcing himself to be calm. “If he’s fine, you’ll just drive him away. If he’s… _not_ doing well, he won’t want anyone to know. We have to be quiet about this.”

“I don’t _care_ if he wants people to know, Nate! The last time we didn’t hear from him for a while, someone _shot_ him. I know we’ve all thought about doing it, but someone _actually_ _shot a gun_ into his vital organs. If it wasn’t for that French floozy, Chuck would have—“ She cuts off, her breath growing quick and frantic.

“We don’t know that anything is even wrong. He’s Chuck— he always disappears and he _always_ comes back.”

“I _know_ that something isn’t right. How long has it been since any of us have seen him? And not just on his way to the office or stumbling home drunk, but actually spent time with him? Chuck is in real trouble. I— I can _feel_ it, Nate.” Blair shuts her eyes and breathes out shakily.

Serena takes her by the shoulders. “Blair, don’t think that way. We’re going to find him. But we have to handle this carefully.”

“Fine. I’m giving us the rest of the day to come up with a solid lead, and then I’m calling a private invetigator.”

Nate calls Dan, on the very slim chance that maybe he’d seen him in the past few days. Of course, he hadn’t, but he insists on coming over and helping in any way he can. “Meet us at the Empire.”

* * *

Nate heads to the front desk. “Chuck Bass still isn’t here?”

“No, sir,” the concierge replies.

“Do you know the last time he was in?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Archibald, but I work the day shift. I wouldn’t know whether he was here at night. Is... everything okay?”

“All fine.” Serena gives him her most winning smile. “He’s just late for a lunch date. But that’s not exactly news, right?”

Blair holds up her phone and smiles. “Oh, would you look at that? Chuck just texted me. He says his limo’s stuck in traffic. He’ll be here as soon as possible. Is there any chance we could wait for him in his suite?”

The concierge, who has dealt with Blair enough to know a scheme is probably afoot, but isn’t sure exactly how, nods hesitantly. “Oh. Uh, I don’t see why not.”

“Excellent.”

* * *

“Chuck?” She calls into the empty apartment. The click of her heels echoes against the walls and something about the sound makes her shiver.

Chuck is nowhere to be found. His closet is full of clothes. As far as she can tell, no more than one or two outfits were missing. His briefcase was there, locked and still full of papers judging by the weight. His laptop is still plugged into its charger, resting on the coffee table.

“All his stuff is still here. His luggage, clothes, briefcase, even his laptop. How’s your theory about him going on _vacation_ looking now?” Blair snaps at Nate.

“Yeah, Nate, I have to admit it’s not looking good. Maybe— maybe we should start calling around hospitals. Or, um,” Dan clears his throat. “Morgues.”

Blair sits down on Chuck’s couch. She suddenly can’t trust her legs. She grabs a decorative pillow and hugs it to her chest.

“I’m going to be sick,” she mutters.

Serena kneels down next to her, putting a hand on her back. She shoots Dan a look, as if to say _great_ _timing._

“We are going to find him.”

“How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”


	2. Escape to Heron Lake

The cuts were deeper than he realized. That has been happening more and more often— he just spaces out and keeps cutting until he starts to feel okay again, and sometimes when he’s done it scares him how many or how deep the wounds are. He folds up his pocket square and puts it under his shirt to soak up the blood as he speed-walks to his lawyer’s office.

The lawyer tells him that because Bass Enterprises is a closely held company, only the major stakeholders need to know if he’s checking himself into a hospital. She also assures him that having a CEO in the looney bin isn’t exactly good for business, so they’re not inclined to tell anyone. He has her draft up some NDAs anyway, just in case someone— okay, it would definitely be Blair— thinks to track down the stakeholders. He sends an assistant back to the meeting with a flimsy apology and takes his limo back to the Empire.

He dials the number, which he knows by heart by now. A cheerful voice answers. “Heron Lake Wellness Center. How may I help you?”

He swallows. His mouth is dry. His hand strays to his left arm, running over the raised scar tissue. “Who do I talk to about checking in for treatment?”

“I can put you on the phone with our insurance liaison, if you’ll hold one moment—“

“No insurance. I’ll pay cash.”

“Oh. Um, well we do have a few beds open, Mr.—?”

“Bass. Chuck Bass.” He can’t feel his lips. He’s surprised he can bring himself to talk at all.

“Well, Mr. Bass, we usually take new admissions to our residential program on Wednesdays. Is that long enough for you to get things organized and travel here?”

“Wednesday’s not going to work. I’ll change my mind by Wednesday. It needs to be today.”

“Well, I would have to speak with—“

“Please. I will pay up front. You have open beds, you said so yourself. Just— please.”

“Okay. I’ll put you on the phone with a case manager and you can tell her some more about what brings you here.”

A hold that seems to last an eternity. He considers hanging up the phone at least twice before another voice comes on the line.

“Hello, Mr. Bass, this is Sarah. I’m a case manager here at Heron Lake. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about what brings you here?”

“I...” He didn’t know he would have to actually _talk_ about it. Every useful word he knows seems to shrivel up and disappear. He doesn’t know how to explain this, this _thing_ that crept into his life and is now holding him captive.

“Mr. Bass?”

“Depression, I guess.” He manages.

“Have you had any thoughts about hurting yourself, Mr. Bass?”

He almost laughs. “I have.” He sighs. “I mean, I _have_ hurt myself. Not trying to die. Just trying to…I don’t know exactly.”

“Do you mind describing to me in what ways you’ve self-harmed?”

 _Self-harm._ He hates the phrase already, blocky and dull, like a blade that tears skin slowly.

“I cut myself. And I used to fight people. Not trying to win, just wanting to get hurt.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“About 4 years, in one form or another.”

“Are you currently suicidal?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, Mr. Bass. I’d recommend that you be admitted to our program for process addiction and co-occurring depression. I can email you some documents about what to pack for your stay, and what to expect when you get here. Did Regina at the front desk give you an admission date?”

“I sort of insisted that I come tonight.”

“Is there a reason for this feeling of urgency, Mr. Bass?”

“I’m afraid I’ll change my mind. Or, maybe I’ll go… too far.”

Sarah clears her throat. “Would you be able to make a check-in time of 9:00 tonight?”

* * *

He throws his new clothes and the cash— his hand lingers over the kit, wanting to take it with him even though that’s ridiculous— in a duffel bag. He throws in whatever occurs to him: toothbrush, toothpaste, his ID, a few books, a handful of pens. But he leaves his briefcase, his laptop, all his suits. Clean slate. He turns his phone off and puts it in the top drawer of his nightstand. The place he was going didn’t allow phones anyway, and if he takes it with him on the bus ride down, it would only tempt him to check Gossip Girl or do something else equally stupid.

He throws a band-aid on his cuts from this morning and changes into a less conspicuous outfit: a cream cable knit sweater, khakis, loafers, sunglasses. He looks in the mirror. Still a bit too… _Bass._ He puts his head under the faucet, washing out his Frederic Malle hair oil. He ruffles his hair in the mirror, letting it get slightly messy. Maybe not good enough to fool a dedicated Gossip Girl subscriber, but he certainly doesn’t look too much like himself. He grabs his bag and heads for the door. He pauses, lingers in the doorframe. He heads back to his bedroom and slips one last thing into his bag. Then off to the subway.

He wishes he’d had the foresight to get high before he’d started the journey. At first, he tries to do the crossword in the New York Times he’d bought in the train station, but he can’t focus and his hands are shaking too hard to hold the pen steady. He gives up and stares out the window, gripping the handle of his duffel bag like it’s his last connection to reality. He almost bolts a few times on the way— at Port Authority, when he’s switching from the subway to the Greyhound, then when the Greyhound idles at truck stops along the way, and then when he gets off the bus at the station in Ocala, Florida. It would be so easy to get up and disappear among the anonymous crowds in whatever minor city he stumbles into.

But he makes it. Ocala, Florida, population: 56,000. The Wikipedia page for this smudge on the map says it’s a “city”, but Chuck sees very little evidence that this is the case. The middle of the city is a few palm-lined blocks, all gas stations and blocky grey office complexes studded with long glass windows. A sign declares it the “Horse Capital of the World”. He nearly vomits. (But a change of pace is what he’s looking for, isn’t it?) He stops in bus station bathroom, digging in his bag for the secret item he’d stashed away. He figures they’ll search his bags, so he hides it in his sock, hugging the contours of his feet. He knows it’s a bad idea, taking contraband to rehab, but he needs a small totem, a tether to life as he knows it.

He calls a cab from a payphone (my God, this town has _functioning payphones_ ) to take him the rest of the way there. They glide out of the city and past miles of woods— the rivers they pass by, even the most proud Manhattanite had to admit, were beautiful— calm as crystal and gleaming in shades of green he’s never seen in nature. The sun is setting over the tangles of trees and the sky looks so big here, not far and gray like it is in New York. He hears owls calling. Once he’s in the car, he knows he’s made it. Part of him calms down, _I made it, the worst is over_. Another, much larger part, is freaking out over how emotional and crazy he sounded on the phone, how out of control he feels. And, because old habits don’t seem to die with him, some wall in his mind drops down and he can’t feel a thing. Worse, he’s embarrassed that he ever did feel anything. He feels the old instinct to brush everything off, to pretend to be okay, to be cool and take nothing seriously, grasping at him.

A gate with a big sign declaring his entrance to Heron Lake: Where Your Wellness Journey Begins. He suppresses an eye roll. At the end of a winding stone path, past stables and wooden chair overlooking marshy ponds, is a sprawling single-story white ranch house. Where, he realizes, he’ll be living for the foreseeable future. It’s not the Astoria, but it’s also not a padded room and a straitjacket, which Chuck had begun to suspect was what he needed.

An orderly in a Heron Lake polo takes his bag while he fills out forms: medical history (nothing to report besides a few cases of alcohol poisoning, the broken ribs from when Blair and Louis first got engaged, and a hospitalization for injuries incurred during a stupid middle school adventure in Switzerland), sexual activity (yes, lots, with anyone, any way they like it), family history of mental illness (no mother, a father so emotionally closed-off any psychiatrist would have needed to take a crowbar to his psyche), living situation and occupation (CEO of Bass Industries, previous employment: n/a, lives alone). _Well, when you put it like that, it looks pretty bare and depressing… Okay, yeah, that tracks._

He leans back, crossing one leg over the other, sunglasses still on even though he’s inside. He folds his hands and idly kicks at the drooping leaves on a big potted plant. He’s shifted fully into Asshole Mode, he can feel it, but he can’t stop himself.

When they’re done with his bags, they give him a list of all the items they found that aren’t allowed: his belt, any shoes with laces, any pants with drawstrings, the pens he had hastily thrown in his bag. They ask him to sign a form saying he understands that they’ll be confiscated until he checks himself out.

“Confiscate? I didn’t know we were doing police role play. I seem to have left my handcuffs at home.”

The orderly, already done with his shit, offers him the pen again. He takes it and signs.

“Also, we’re going to need to take the shoes you’re wearing.”

“Why?”

“Laces,” he says, as though the implication were obvious.

“Laces?” then it hits him. They’re afraid he’ll hang himself.

He removes his shoes and hands them to the orderly.

“What do I wear on my feet?”

“You’ll see the nurse now. She’ll give you new socks,” he says.

 _Nurse?_ Everything is starting to feel horribly serious. Usually, when he falls apart, he or his friends picks him up and they try to move on as if nothing had happened. He’s definitely not used to this.

The nurse asks his to remove his shirt and pants. “I would say ‘buy me dinner first’, but you’ve probably heard that one before.”

The nurse, who is pretty in a suburban mom way (great bone structure, bad highlights), sighs. It’s probably the end of her shift. Chuck complies.

“I’m going to note the location of your scars. Do you usually clean your cuts after?”

“You know, when a woman is looking at me in my underwear, I usually get more of a reaction.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Nice boxers. Now answer the question.”

He sighs and nods.

“These ones on your stomach, when did you do these?”

“This morning.”

“They don’t look so great. Hop up on the table, I’ll clean them.”

Chuck was trying his hardest to shut down any capacity for feeling, but he still feels some humiliation having a stranger (who, under normal circumstances, he would probably end up sleeping with) charting the map of scars he’s turned his own skin into.

She applies an antibacterial, and bandages him up. “Your parents forcing you to come here?”

“I don’t have parents.” He says, feeling his tone grow harsh and barbed and spiteful.

“Well, whoever made you come here, just give this place a chance, huh? Some of these scars are pretty deep, and you’re so young.” She’s given this speech before, he’s sure, probably dozens of times. She’s not even making eye contact. But still, he sees real sadness. He wonders if she has kids.

She goes into a drawer and pulls out a pair of thick socks with rubber grips, plus a pair slides and a robe with the Heron Lake logo. “Here you go. Someone will show you to your room.

When they leave him in his room, he puts on the slippers. He pulls his contraband out of his socks: sheathed in layers of wax paper packaging, a single shining razor blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's wondering about the wildly specific details of the rehab, it's loosely based on The Refuge in Ocklahawa, Florida, which does in fact have a very good self-harm treatment program! I'm also mixing in bits of my personal experience at other treatment centers (shout out to my fellow Former Troubled Teens, hope you enjoyed the reference to hospital socks)


	3. In Which Two Leads Appear

Serena and Nate comb over the suite one last time while Dan makes Blair a cup of tea on to calm her down (Chuck’s kettle had never been used, still had its warranty from William Sonoma folded up inside it. Chuck Bass was not exactly a tea drinker.)

She grips the mug with both hands. “Thanks, Humphrey.”

“No trouble.” He looks up at her tenderly.

Nate comes back in with a sigh. “We got nothing," he reports. 

“I think we should all go home,” Serena says, putting a hand on Blair’s shoulder.

* * *

“I’m so sorry Blair,” Dan says in the towncar back to her apartment. “I know how much you love him.”

“I don’t _love_ him, okay?” She replies, too sharply. “I just— there’s a lot of history there.”

“Right. Well, either way, I’m sorry.” He puts a hand on her back.

She shrugs away. “You’re talking about him like he’s already dead, Humphrey. Please, do me a favor and try to hide your relief.”

“ _Relief?_ Are you serious, Blair? I’m just trying to be a supportive friend and let you know I’m here for you if—“

“If?” she demands.

“If the worst happens,” he says gently.

“Let’s not think about that until we have to.” Serena says, looking sharply at Dan.

The car turns on to Lexington Ave. “Can you let me off here?” Serena calls to the driver. “Dan, walk me to my door?”

Dan gives her the face that means _I may look smart, but I actually have no idea what’s going on._ She tugs on his peacoat sleeve and gives him a significant look.

He follows her out on to the sidewalk in front of her building.

“And this is why we don’t fraternize with writers” Blair says, readjusting her headband. “We are _going_ to find him. You got that, Archibald?”

“Of course we’re going to find him.”

“And get rid of the pity in your voice.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, half-joking. It’s a relief to see Blair back in kill mode, even if it’s just a façade to cover up all the pain and fear she must be feeling right now.

“First stop, we talk to Chuck’s private investigator. Second stop, we get Serena out of the house so I can interrogate Lily.”

“Lily?”

“If Chuck got arrested, or he’s on the run, or he’s starting a new life in _Peru_ or something, she’s the only one he’d feel safe telling. She’s practically his mother, after all. _And_ she can’t figure out how to work the Gossip Girl website.”

Once they disappear around the corner and out of sight of Dan and Serena, Blair calls the investigator.

They meet him in a dimly lit bar with a secret back room. Nate stands by the door, more than a little uncomfortable with the shady venue and the even shadier private eye. Blair takes the lead in questioning him. “Has Chuck Bass used your services any time recently?”

“I don’t talk about clients with other clients.”

"Chuck is missing. Gone without a trace. If you know something, I think it’s best to say it now.”

He looks around the back room, as though someone mat be listening. Then he sighs. “My clients pay me a lot to be discreet. You would have to pay me even more to forget that discretion.”

She rolls her eyes. “Money isn’t a problem.”

“Well, in that case, he hired me a few weeks ago. Corporate espionage stuff, he wanted to know how to find out if some rival CEO had gone to rehab.”

“Which CEO? Anyone who would be willing to hurt him?”

“He wouldn’t tell me who. He said he wanted to know what I would have to do to find out before he went through with it. I told him those places keep their records locked up tight, so unless you know who to bribe, it’s a no-go. I guess he figured it was too much of a long shot, because I never heard about it again.”

Blair exchanges a look with Nate. Could this be it? Some corporate back-and-forth back-stabbing gone awry? Chuck _had_ seemed to be spending a lot of time in the office lately. It would explain why no one saw him going out lately.

Blair takes out her checkbook. “How much for the intel, and how much more to get you to find Chuck?”

* * *

Dan hikes his shoulders up against the cold, hands balled in his pockets as he watches Blair’s car pull away. “You don’t honestly think I’m relieved that Chuck might be dead, do you?”

“Of course not,” Serena replies. “She only said that because she’s hurt.”

“Then why the emergency meeting on the sidewalk?”

"You really have to stop with all this talk about morgues, and ‘what if the worst happens’, and—“

“Whoa, whoa. I’m just trying to make sure she’s prepared in case something happened to him.”

“I understand that.” She steps in closer, lowers her voice. “Hell, I might have felt the same way. But that was before I found _this—“_ Shepulls something out of her purse: it’s one of Chuck’s pocket squares, soaked in blood.


	4. The First Step Is Admitting

Chuck wakes up gasping for air. He has no idea where he is for a moment. He’s waken up in plenty of strange beds, but this feels different. It’s too warm for New York, and he hears birds outside his window. Then he looks down and sees his Heron Lake logo slippers.  _Right_. 

There’s an alarm clock on the bedside table, along with a leather-bound journal and a felt-tipped pen they’d given him to “help him process his thoughts”. He checks the time: 5:36 am. He’s not supposed to get up until 6:00 according to the schedule they gave him last night, so he walks out to his room’s screened-in porch and watches the sun finish its rise into the wan blue of the sky. He wishes he weren’t so numb, wishes that the sight could awaken something in him.

His door is open (he’s been informed he’s not allowed to close it at night), so he listens carefully for footsteps before working his way over to his dresser. He checks for his blade: it’s still there, hidden in a bundled pair of socks. It comforts him just touching it. He isn’t planning on  using it, he reasons to himself. That would defeat the whole purpose of being here. It was just... security. 

He’s tucking it back into place when he hears footsteps. He slams the drawer shut, craning his neck to look who was walking by. It was just another patient: a thirty-something with an overgrown beard, shuffling sleepily in his Heron Lake robe. 

“Why are you up so early?” he asks the other man.

“I want to get a shower in so I can be first in the med line. I’m Dave, by the way.” He scratches the back of his head (light brown curls, slightly unwashed-looking) and yawns, then offers his hand.

“Chuck.” He doesn’t take him up on the shake.

“Bipolar alcoholic.” He says, pointing to himself. Clearly, he expects Chuck to respond with his own diagnosis. 

“Is that how you introduce yourself on a first date?” He asks drily.

Dave laughs. “Maybe that’s why I’m single. I’m gonna go get a staff to unlock my bathroom. Later, Chuck.”

Chuck gets his own bathroom unlocked, showers, and changes into a button-down and khakis (it’s 60 degrees in this subtropical nowheresville, but he’d rather die of heatstroke than risk showing any scars.) He sits down in the common room (carpeted, overstuffed couches, succulents and Buddhist singing bowls on low wooden tables, brightly colored mediocre art on the walls), pretending to read a paperback Fitzgerald novel he brought with him. Other…  patients , he guesses he should call them, chat in twos and threes. 

Dave, the curly-haired, over-friendly alcoholic, sits down directly next to him. “Hey, new neighbor.”

“Hello, David.” He says without looking up.

“Call me Dave.”

“David’s fine for me.” He turns a page, feigning total engrossment in his book. Dave doesn’t get the hint. 

“You’re probably going to have individual therapy after breakfast, but I can give you a tour after my morning meeting.” 

“I’m beginning to get the sense there’s no getting rid of you until I say yes.”

“Basically.”

* * *

He walks along another gravel road, sun beaming down on him and the other patients (he hates that the word applies to him) on the way to the dining hall. It’s actually sort of pretty, wooden benches scattered in the grass, which is still a dark and vibrant green despite it being winter. 

At breakfast, he sits at a small table by the window: alone, sunglasses on, sipping a black coffee. He wishes he’d brought the journal they’d given him, so he could pretend to have something to do. 

When the half hour for breakfast is over, they head back to the group room, where a perma-smiling staff member gives him directions to his therapist’s office. 

The leather loveseat is full of so many decorative pillows Chuck has to throw a few on the ground just to sit. 

His therapist, Jackie, is in her mid-forties with slicked back dark hair cropped at ear-length. 

“What brings you here, Chuck— is it Chuck, or do you prefer Charles?”

“Chuck. No one calls me Charles except—“ He snaps his jaw shut.  _Shit_. He hadn’t meant to say that. 

“Except?”

“My stepmother.  _Ex_ -stepmother. Lily.”

“Chuck it is, then. What brings you here, Chuck?”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re telling me that’s not in your notes?”

“Well, I’d like to hear it in your own words.”

He crosses his legs and perches his elbow on the arm of the sofa. He bites his thumbnail. He can’t make his vocal cords work. 

She lets nearly a minute of silence elapse. “If you don’t talk about it, you can’t get better.” She finally says, gently. 

“Fine.” His voice is pulled tight. “I cut myself.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“Few years.”

“Do you have any idea how it started?”

“I got a paper cut one day and from then on, I was hooked,” he says drily.

“If you’re not ready to talk about the particulars of your cutting, we can talk about something else?"

More silence. 

“What’s your relationship like with your family? Friends?”

“My parents are dead. Well, one of them, at least. Possibly both.”

The therapist isn’t quite sure what to do with that. “Any siblings?”

“Two stepsiblings. Do you read the tabloids?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well, if you did, you would know my stepsister.”

“How does your sister—“

“ _ Step _ sister.”

“How does she feel about you being here? Especially with your family being in the spotlight in that way.” 

“She doesn’t know, and I doubt that she would care.”

“Who _did_ you tell that you were seeking treatment?”

“Hmmm. Well, there’s you, and the woman I talked to over the phone before I came here. And there’s...no, actually, that’s it.”

“So no one in your life knows you have a problem with self-harm?”

He suppresses a grimace. “ _ No _ , and like I said, they don’t care. Now, shouldn’t you be asking me about my abandonment issues or something?” 

“Well, I think your abandonment issues have a great deal to do with this. Why didn’t you tell your friends and family you were coming here?”

He levels his most poisonous gaze at her. “I don’t have a family.”


	5. Private Eyes (They're Watching You)

“ _Where_ did you get that?” Dan demands, taking the bloody handkerchief from Serena's hand.

“While Blair was looking around Chuck’s suite, I saw it in his laundry.”

“Who else knows about this?”

Serena sighs. “Just you and me.”

“Why didn’t you tell Blair?”

“I don’t know what it means! Maybe he got in a fight, maybe he cut himself shaving, maybe it was a nosebleed. I don’t know. But there’s no use scaring her before we figure out more.”

“ _We_ figure out more?” Dan raises his eyebrows.

“You and me are going to find out what happened to him.”

* * *

Tucked into a corner booth, the investigator nurses a cognac and asks Nate and Blair a few questions. “Is he impulsive? The kind of guy who would run off without telling his girlfriend?”

Blair reddens. “I am _not_ his girlfriend.”

“Whatever you wanna call it. Is he the type?”

“Well, _yes_ , I guess so, but he doesn’t have his passport.”

“Somewhere in the States, then?”

“He can’t stand any American city that isn’t New York. Maybe Malibu— but during the peak season, not in February.”

“Any enemies?”

Nate laughs. “He is not exactly a master at making friends. But no one who would want him killed or anything crazy like that.”

“Is he a drinker? A junkie?”

Nate mouths over Blair’s shoulder: _yes._ Blair turns around and catches it. She swats Nate on the shoulder.

“He is known to get… overserved at times.”

“After his dad died, he started smoking _opium_. He’s not exactly the mascot for temperance,” Nate says.

“So yes to drinking and drugs. How about women?” He turns to Blair. “No offense to you, sweetheart.”

“He engages in casual sex, if that’s what you’re asking.” Blair says caustically.

“But no relationship, as far as anyone can tell.” Nate supplies.

“Does he have a boat? Some way to get overseas without being spotted?”

“Yeah, he has two boats and a private plane.”

He sighs and scratches his eyebrow. “So he has enemies, a lot of bad habits, and no girlfriend or parents I can talk to? And if he’s overseas, we wouldn’t know where because he’d be traveling under the radar without documentation? You’re not exactly narrowing down the options here.”

“I’m sorry that finding our missing friend is such an inconvenience for you. Less attitude, more questions.” Blair snaps.

“Okay, one last question comes to mind. Was he depressed? Or… suicidal?"

Blair scoffs with disbelief. She stands up, and gestures for Nate to do the same so she can exit the booth. “That’s ridiculous! I don’t know how you could even _suggest_ that,” she snatches her Saint Laurent clutch off the table. “Let’s go, Nate.”

“Blair, it’s a fair question.” Nate’s voice is soft. He stands and puts a hand on her arm, urging her to sit down again. “Chuck has… a lot of problems. We should at least rule it out.”

“No, Nate, it is _not_ a ‘fair question’! Chuck would never leave us like that! Not without saying— without saying goodbye to me.” Her voice cracks. Then, without her permission, tears start welling in her eyes. She wipes them away violently and throws the check on the table.

“I’m taking the car. Nate, you can walk home.” Blair pushes past him and storms out, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

* * *

“You know Blair will want to go looking for him.” Dan is sitting with Serena in her room at Lily’s place, him cross-legged on the floor with his laptop open, and her laying stomach-down on her bed.

“Which is exactly why we have to do it first. Whenever Chuck gets hurt, Blair completely falls apart. Think of how she was after the crash. If she finds him— hurt, or _worse_ , I don’t think she’d ever recover from that.”

“So what’s our first move?” Dan says, typing away.

“We have to get her not to meddle in this.”

“Riiight. Let’s also call the Pope and get him to convert to Judaism, while we’re at it.” He shoots Serena a look and goes back to typing.

Serena tosses her pillow at him. “Seriously, Dan, we have to keep her away from this whole thing.”

“Okay, okay. But how do we actually, you know, find him?”

“Well, you were right: we should check hospitals and morgues. And put some sort of look out for his boats. Maybe he took one to Mykonos and he’s stuck in a Greek jail or something.”

“Hey, doesn’t Chuck have a private investigator?”

“Yeah, but he’s not someone I’d trust. Why?”

Dan turns his laptop screen around. _Spotted: Nate Archibald and Queen B in a smoky bar— with some shady characters. Anyone recognize the PI? That's right, a known associate of our very own Charles B. Bass. The plot thickens... xoxo, Gossip Girl._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you get two short chapters instead of one long one this time. <3 i hope you all keep reading and enjoying.


	6. Therapy, Take Two

“So how was your first individual?”

“Hello again, David.” Chuck doesn’t break stride.

“You know, you never did tell me what you’re in for.” Dave says, scurrying to catch up, then walking backward to face Chuck. He’s wearing a faded Grateful Dead t-shirt and corduroy pants. Total fashion disaster, but in a unique enough way that it’s almost endearing.

Chuck stops suddenly. Dave stops too, a bit too late, and they’re face to face, almost toe to toe. “Guess.”

“Guess?”

“What do you think I’m here for?”

Dave smiles, like this is the most fun game in the world. “Well, you’re not shaking or twitching—and you’ve got great teeth—“

“Thanks.”

“—So it isn’t drugs. You smell rich, so maybe a gambling addiction? Or maybe just good old fashioned depression? Wait! I’ve got it. You’re wearing long sleeves in 65 degree weather: that means cutter or anorexic. And they let you walk around the grounds, so you’re not an E.D. patient. Cutter, final answer.”

A beat.

“I’ll admit that was impressive, albeit in a very sad way.”

Dave claps for himself. “3 admissions and counting. I’ve gotten good at it. Are you ready for your tour?”

Chuck sighs, fighting a smile. “If I absolutely must.”

* * *

After the tour (“Dude, when they clear you for activities, we gotta go kayaking together”) is art therapy (he was on some sort of no-scissors list, and he felt stupid attempting painting, so he tries to draw his friends in marker. He can’t stand them staring at him, so he crosses out their eyes with red ink.) Then he has an hour of downtime (he finds the lounge with a TV and pretends to care about a police procedural while he drinks herbal tea. The victim was papery-white, all his blood spilled dark as wine and flashing blue in the lights of the cop cars. _Lucky bastard_ , he thinks.) then lunch (Dave has his own group of friends, and Chuck is pretty sure he’d be allowed to sit with them if he asked, but there is no way in Hell he’s going to ask them.) His schedule says he has a “process group” next, whatever that means, so he follows about 10 other patients to a group room (three big leather couches, enough decorative pillows for several B&Bs.) A staff member named Taylor asks them to settle down, folds a shawl around her shoulders and sits cross-legged on a chair at the front of the room.

“You know the drill, people. Name, one problem behavior you’re working on, and how you’re feeling right now. Who wants to start?”

What was he _feeling_? How on earth could he answer that? Bad, for starters. Tired. So fucking tired. Awkward. Like he hasn’t felt this awkward around people since middle school. Like it’s taking every bit of energy he has not to bolt back to his room and dig out his razor blade and find any strip of uncorrupted skin to lay claim to with all his hurt. Like—

Taylor passes it off to a college-aged girl with huge, scared eyes. “I’m Jessie, I’m working on not acting on compulsions, and I’m feeling anxious but centered.” She passes it to the person next to her.

How could she just _know_ how she felt? He feels oddly intimidated. He commands himself to think, to come up with words, they didn’t have to be true, just any words, and for his voice not to fail on him when he tries to say them. The person next to him is talking. His palms are sweating. The last time he remembers his palms sweating like this was when he was trying to unhook Georgina Sparks’ bra in freshman year. The person next to him is done now, and looking at him expectantly. 

“I’m Chuck, I’m feeling fine. Tired, I suppose. And it’s my first full day, so I’m not really sure how to answer the other question.”

“For future reference, Chuck, just name an issue that you want to work on while you’re here.”

The next person speaks, and he starts breathing again. As long as no one expects him to say anything else, he’ll be fine. When the whole circle is done, Taylor speaks again. “Does anyone have an issue that’s come up in their day or during their treatment here that you’d like to process?” He wills someone to raise their hand. If Taylor is anything like his teachers at St Jude’s, she’ll start cold-calling soon, and he’s no more prepared for that than he was in his sophomore year organic chem class.

Someone raises their hand. _Thank God._ He spends the rest of group staring at the clock. It’s only 45 minutes, he just needs to run out the time and he’ll never have to say anything. Staring at the clock, imagining he can hear the ticking under the voices, he starts to feel like he can’t breathe. What is he _doing_ here? On a psych ward, staring at a clock, _wearing business casual clothes?_ He should be looking at quarterly reports or sleeping with escorts or picking fights with strangers in bars or buying more Dior cologne or— something. Not this. He doesn’t want to talk about his cutting, he doesn’t want to talk about anything. Right now, he just wants to run. He feels like ten more seconds in this unseasonably warm hellhole and he’s going to throw up on the multicolored carpet. He digs his nails into his wrist, as subtly as he can, feeling his heart rate spike as the pain gets worse. He wonders if he can break the skin. Just a bit harder, and—

“Okay, that’s time, I have to let you go.”

Chuck gets out as fast as his legs will allow.

It takes a few days for Chuck to learn his schedule, and to settle into something that resembles a routine. He eats meals alone, he reads (he has no idea what to do when he runs out of books), and he avoids speaking whenever possible. The art therapist truly doesn’t care what Chuck does as long as he doesn’t try to touch the scissors, so he spends his twice-weekly art therapy sketching in marker and daydreaming about being on the banks of the River Amstel, buzzed off good hash and watching the sun set. About twice a day he thinks about making a run for it, but he doesn’t, mostly because he has no idea what he’d do once he passes the front gate. Return to New York? Not after the disappearing act he pulled, and not while he was still…well, _crazy_. Stay in Florida? Only under duress. Take off to some other place? Sure, but then he’d most likely turn up dead before the spring. So he stays.

* * *

“I’d like you tell me a little bit about your father,” Jackie says.

“I’ve been through that. I was in therapy last year." He looks up at the cieling and speaks in a bored voice. "Father never approved of me, didn’t want me, blamed me for the death of my mother. If she’s dead, that is. That remains to be seen.”

“That was… a lot. So you’ve been in therapy before?”

“Yes, for a few months. And I thought they fixed me, so having to be here is all the more frustrating. Is there a refund policy for this kind of situation?”

“First of all, no. I’m pretty sure you’re aware that’s not how it works. Second of all, did you tell your last therapist about your cutting?”

“Well, it turned out my first therapist was actually being bribed by my romantic rival to expose my secrets. Long story. My second therapist, no.”

“Do you know why you didn’t?”

“I didn’t realize it was a problem. It was just…a habit.”

“Then what did you talk about?”

“This may shock you to hear, but I am not always a ray of sunshine.” He starts counting on his fingers. “I showed up wasted and late to my own father’s funeral and told my stepmother it was her fault he was dead. When I realized I was in love with my girlfriend Blair, I told her I had lost interest in her once I took her virginity. Then, after she gave me an incomprehensible number of second chances, I traded her to my uncle for a hotel. I also punched a window in front of her when she left me for a literal prince. I could go on.”

“No, that’s enough for now.” Jackie replies, trying to contain her shock.

“Usually, when people ask me to explain what’s wrong with me, I just say ‘I’m Chuck Bass’. For most people, that’s enough.”

“And you feel that your therapist got to the bottom of why you made these sorts of decisions?”

“I never had a childhood, so I behaved like a child. I had no idea how to experience intimacy, so I slept around and pushed people away. My father was a horrible example for how to treat women, and I copied him— at first, because I didn’t know better, and then because I subconsciously thought it would make him approve of me.” He rattles this off, verbatim from what his therapist had told him, as though he were relating a shopping list.

“And it helped you treat the people in your life better?”

“I told Blair to marry someone else, which she did. I stayed away from everyone I had hurt, I gave a couple million to charity, and I got a dog. Like I said, I thought I was fixed.” He examines his nails.

“Do you want to know what I think? About why you never talked about your self-harm?”

“Well, that’s what I’m paying you for.”

“I think you only went to therapy because you wanted to stop hurting other people. But you didn’t want to stop hurting yourself. You’re still punishing yourself. You still hate yourself so much that you believe you deserve the worst pain you could possibly inflict on yourself.”

Chuck looks up, out of a window. Jackie lets him sit in silence for a moment.

He gets up and walks out.


	7. Monkey the Dog

Blair gets a call from Chuck’s PI the next day. No John Does matching Chuck’s description in any Manhattan-area hospitals. Ditto for the morgues. She’s relieved, of course, that he isn’t laying unidentified in a coroner’s office, but she also knows that just because they haven’t found his corpse, doesn’t mean he isn’t one. The thought of Chuck, who was beautiful and aching and sophisticated and funny, reduced to a lifeless, motionless _thing_ was too much to bear thinking about for more than a few seconds.

She had to keep going. She needs Serena out of the house so she can interrogate Lily. So she calls Dan.

“Humphrey?”

“Hi Blair.”

“Look. I don’t usually apologize to people.”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve noticed.”

“But I didn’t mean what I said to you. About you being relieved.”

“Okay.” A breath. “Are you about to apologize?”

“I just did.”

“Actually, you didn’t.” She can tell he’s smiling on the other end of the line.

She sighs dramatically. “I am sorry, Humphrey.”

“Apology accepted. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I think Serena is taking this whole situation a lot harder than she seems. Can you maybe take her out for the day, get her mind off of things?”

“Yeah. Uh, sure.”

She feels him wanting to say something all the way from Brooklyn. “What, Humphrey?”

“You’re going to get through this, Blair. You know that, right?”

“How can you be sure?”

“You’re Blair Waldorf,” he says simply.

* * *

Blair appears at the van der Woodsen’s in a House of Poiret coat and a vintage Dior top-handle purse (the Blair Waldorf equivalent of armor.) “Hi, Lily, is Serena here?” she asks with her sweetest smile.

“No, she went out with Daniel. Did you two have plans?”

“No, no, I just thought she’d be home, with everything going on with Chuck.”

“Oh, yes. This must be so hard for you, Blair.” Lily takes off her glasses and folds Blair into a hug. (Incidentally, Blair needed a hug badly and had to steel herself not to melt into her arms and start crying.)

“When’s the last time you spoke to him?”

“I honestly don’t remember. Maybe a week or so ago? He’s been so distant…” Lily puts a hand on her chest, plucking at her necklace nervously.

“Did he seem like he was in some kind of trouble?”

“You know how Charles is. If he has a problem, he’s going to try to fix it himself.”

“And he didn’t come by to pick up his passport or anything?”

“No…” Lily clears her throat tactfully. “Blair, Serena seems worried about you. Like you might be…obsessing over finding Charles.”

“I’m just asking questions.”

“He’s going to come back, Blair. You can’t allow yourself to think any differently. Do you want a cup of tea? We can sit down and talk about something more pleasant.”

Before Blair can say that she’s had enough of people offering her warm beverages, the elevator dings. Dan and Serena emerge.

“B? What are you doing here?” Serena asks.

“Came to check in on everyone. I was just leaving.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” Dan offers.

When the elevator door closes, he turns to her. “So I guess you didn’t want Serena out of the house out of the goodness of you heart?”

“Serena has somehow got it in her head that I shouldn’t be looking for Chuck. It’s like she thinks I’m too fragile or something.”

“No one who’s met you thinks you’re fragile, Blair. But some things are too painful even for the toughest Queen of Manhattan. Anyway, I know you’re still searching. I saw your meeting with Chuck’s PI on Gossip Girl. Was he any help?”

Blair feels herself getting emotional. She clears her throat and adjusts her headband. “He’s an idiot. He thought Chuck might have— he thinks he was suicidal. Which is obviously not true.”

“Oh. For what it’s worth, he seemed to be doing better last time I checked. I mean, he was in therapy, I got him a dog—“

“You got him _what_?” She demands suddenly.

“Uh...a dog. Four legs, tail, that whole thing?”

“I swear to God, the smarter men look, the dumber they are. Did you _see_ a dog when we went to his suite?”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’ll get the car, you pull up a list of kennels and shelters.”

Blair is buzzing-- find the dog, and maybe they’ll find Chuck. This was a lead, a _real_ lead.

They hit all the upscale kennels first, telling the same story at each one.

“Our friend Chuck boarded his dog Monkey before going on a ski trip. We’re not exactly sure where, but he got injured on the slopes and we want to get the dog and make sure he’s taken care of before Chuck comes home from the hospital.”

The first two places are hipster dog hotels, in Chelsea and midtown. The staff give their apologies and offer them a list of other kennels to call, but say there’s no dog named Monkey and no reservation under Bass in their files. At the third place on their list, they strike gold.

“Well, there’s a dog named Monkey, but he’s under the last name Prince. Can you tell me what the dog looks like?”

“A tall brownish Border Terrier mix, floppy ears, very friendly?” Dan offers.

The receptionist breaks into a smile. “Yep, that’s him!”

She brings the dog around, who immediately leaps on Dan’s legs and tries to lick his face. “Tell Mr. Prince— uh, Bass, that his dog was an angel and that we hope he gets better soon.”

“So, what do we do with him?” Dan asks, scratching Monkey behind the ears in the towncar.

“I’ll take him home, obviously. This is an Upper East Side dog, he’ll have an allergic reaction if you try to take him to your little hipster den in Brooklyn.”

“Fine.” Dan smiles at Blair being so— well, _Blair_ about it. “This is good news, right? No one boards their dog in anticipation of being murdered.”

“He made the reservation under a fake name. He left his laptop, his passport, all his good clothes. It’s like he doesn’t want us to find him. If he left of his own accord, he did it because he wants nothing to do with us.” She takes a deep breath. “Either that, or he put Monkey in a kennel because he knew he’d be dead soon. Either way, he left, and either way, he didn’t think to say goodbye to me.”

* * *

When Blair returns to the apartment holding Monkey’s leash, Dorota is looking at her like she’s insane.

“Miss Blair, I know you’re lonely without Mr. Chuck, but you cannot replace him with dog.”

“No, Dorota, this is his dog.” She says with a roll of her eyes.

“Oh! Then you’ve found Mr. Chuck?”

“No. And we’re no longer going to say his name in this house. Is that clear?”

“I am _very_ confused, Miss Blair. But I also don’t want to ask. Should I go get food for dog?”

“No, I’ll take care of him.” Blair says, leading him up the stairs to her room.

She unclips Monkey’s leash and collapses into bed. _Goddamn you, Chuck_ , she thinks, over and over, forgetting all other words, g _oddamn you_. Chuck was gone—either he ran away or he killed himself, she can’t let herself wonder which one— and he obviously didn’t care enough to tell her or any of their friends before he left them. A sob escapes her throat, and then she’s weeping and gasping for air. She hears the jingle of Monkey’s collar. Her vision is entirely obscured with tears, so she feels him snuggle in next to her rather than seeing it. She rests her head on his back and lets her tears soak into his fur.


	8. Chuck's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for past underage/dubious consent, please be careful!!
> 
> Merry Christmas to you all; my gift to you is some sad shit!

Chuck has been at Heron Lake for almost three weeks. He watches the sun rise every morning, he meets with his psychiatrist every so often (and he’s now on a starter dose of Zoloft, and an as-needed Ativan that he has never once admitted to needing), he doodles through his art therapy, he remains pathologically silent in process group. Every day, after dinner, when everyone lines up to use the phones and call home, he reads, or creates puzzles and mazes for himself to solve in his journal— anything to stop himself from thinking. He’s trying his damnedest not to feel anything, and not to express the few feelings that he’s able to let in. He tries especially not to think about Blair, or Lily, or Eric. If he pretends no one has ever cared for him, and he’s never let them down or shut them out, it’s easier to stay numb, easier to pretend he doesn’t feel anything. And Jackie (perhaps in retaliation for the way he deflects his way through all of their sessions) has added him to the roster of two new groups, which eat into his already-paltry downtime: the Trauma Healing Circle (yawn) and the twice-weekly meeting for Self Harm and Other Process Addictions.

His first meeting with the latter group occurs on a cloudy Wednesday. A thunderstorm advisory has been announced, and as the patients move across the campus, they shuffle on the heels of staff members, in case they have to duck underneath their umbrellas. Chuck stays away from the group, grateful for the space and willing to let the rain fall on him. He’s wearing an argyle sweater vest over a lavender oxford shirt, and linen pants from Ralph Lauren. The outfit reminds him uncomfortably of his high school self. I brings to mind a memory he wishes had stayed buried.

* * *

One time, in freshman year, he didn’t want to go to school, anxious for some reason—maybe a trivial falling-out with Nate, or a test he was sure he’d fail, or maybe just a general sense of unease (These bouts of panic, which he felt from time to time, sped his heart and twisted his stomach in knots. He told himself these little episodes were too stupid and sophomoric to indulge in, and tried to shove them down.) So he’d asked his father, who was jet-lagged from a trip to Tokyo and harried as he looked for a wayward cufflink, if he could come with him to work instead.

“You could write me a note. Besides, job experience is more valuable than dissecting a frog, right?” He was standing in the doorway of his father’s room, hands shoved in his pockets, his St Jude-issued tie unknotted around his neck in a token gesture of compliance with the dress code. He avoided his father’s eyes as he asked.

“Chuck, you’re getting too old to avoid your responsibilities like this. You’re not a kid anymore, there’s no more take-your-kid-to-work days.”

“Respectfully, dad, there were never any take-your-kid-to-work days,” he mutters.

“What did you say?” Bart asks sharply.

“Nothing, dad.”

“I don’t have time for this. I’m going to the office and you are going to school. End of story. And if I get another call from the headmistress that you were absent, or late, we are going to have a very serious talk.”

“I just want to spend the day with you. Don’t you want to spend the day with me?” This is a pathetic last-ditch effort, and he knows it. And he knows if his father turns down this plea, as he’s pretty likely to do, he’ll never live it down.

“I’m too jet-lagged to have this discussion. And, frankly, I’m disgusted with this childish attitude of yours. I don’t know why you’re so desperate to avid school— but whatever it is, I’m sure it’s a problem _you_ created. So man up and face it.” He utters all this without looking up, having finally located the elusive cufflink and busied himself with fastening it to his sleeve.

“You’re right, dad. I’m sorry.”

Bart adjusts his jacket, grabs his briefcase, and heads for the door. At the last second, he turns back and faces Chuck. “By the way, I would wear less purple if I were you. People might get the wrong idea.”

* * *

The door slams. _Disgusted_. That was the way his father felt about him. The word echoes in his skull, buzzing maliciously like a wasp’s nest in his mind. He takes his seat in a small, carpeted room with hard plastic chairs. There are only five people in this group. This makes him uncomfortable for multiple reasons. For one, in a group half the size of process group, how was he supposed to avoid having to share? The room is small enough that he can’t even find in a chair in a remote corner and hope to blend in. In fact, the room is so small that he’s barely in it two minutes before he starts to feel as though the walls are closing in on him. And, if there are so few people like him, Chuck must truly be a freak, even by Heron Lake standards.

He wonders what his father would think if he saw him here, if he knew the secret delight his own son took in cutting himself to pieces. (But he knows the answer to that, doesn’t he? He’d be disgusted.)

Chuck crosses one leg over the other, reclining coolly in his chair. Usually this posture feels… _protective_ , somehow, as if by telegraphing to the world that he doesn’t give a shit, no one can hurt him. But it’s not working. The seat feels so hard and cold and uncomfortable, and he fights the urge to shift and fidget. The shitty weather outside is getting to him, as though even through the window it’s pressing down on him and sapping his will. And the room was so _small_ , just a circle of stupid uncomfortable chairs and four other crazy people and a therapist watching them all like a hawk.

“Your first SHOPA?” A platinum blonde girl in a baggy grey Disneyworld sweatshirt asks. Her glasses are chunky plastic and she’s wearing pajama pants (a lot of patients wear pajamas, and it depresses Chuck to no end. Just because you have no will to live doesn’t mean you have to _dress_ like it.)

“Show…pa?” He sounds out, arching an eyebrow and trying his hardest to look unfriendly and uninterested.

“It’s an acronym. For ‘Self Harm and Other Process Addictions’?” She’s smirking a little at him, as though he’s the crazy one here. (Well, as if he were the _only_ crazy one.)

“Yes, it’s my first.” He answers, then goes back to staring at a wall.

“Are you a cutter too? So far, everyone here is plain old S.H., not much of the O.P.A.” She smiles at her little joke.

“Uh, I’m _S.H._ as well, I suppose.”

“Cool. I’m Gina, by the way.”

The group leader, a 40-something man with meticulously-groomed facial hair named Jeff, closes the door and starts the session.

“Since we have a new group member, why don’t we all go around? Names, ages, problem behavior, and a goal for the day? Gina, you start us off.”

“Hell, yeah. Morning, everyone. Like the man said, I’m Gina. I’m 19, I’m a cutter, and my goal for the day is to handle triggers with DBT skills. And I’ll spare the newbie and send the share to the right.” She winks at Chuck to her left.

The person to her right, a precariously thin girl in baggy black pants and a man’s white undershirt, sits up a little straighter and uncrosses her arms. When Chuck catches a glimpse of her left arm, his eyes widen involuntarily. From just above her bony wrist to her shoulder, every inch of flesh is scarred. In some places, the scars criss-cross and overlap, like she’d tried to put her flesh through a paper shredder. The freshest scars are a livid, shiny purple, the oldest are textureless white hatch-marks. Just looking at her cuts makes Chuck want to run back to his room and dig out his blade and paint a bloody landscape on every virgin strip of skin left on his body. Every nerve ending prickles, and he wishes with every fiber of his being that he were back in New York, exorcising every bad memory with a fresh razor and a bottle of scotch.

The skinny girl clears her throat and speaks in a deep, vaguely bored voice. “Lex, 27, self-harmer and anorexic. Today, I just want to finish a meal without wanting to open a vein.” She ruffles her mullet-length black hair and settles back into a slouch.

The next person is a muscular guy in a beanie and a denim jacket, with one ear pierced but empty of its gauge. “I’m Maxwell. I just turned 31. I’m an addict and a self-harmer. I cut, burn, hit, whatever will get her done. My goal for the day is to…remain mindful, I guess.”

The next person, and the last one before Chuck has to speak, is a pretty brown-skinned girl with nasty-looking welts and gashes on both thighs beneath her cut-off jean shorts. “I’m Jasmine, I’m 23, self-harmer. My goal is to stay safe, and my long-term goal is to get cig privileges back.”

She looks expectantly at Chuck. In fact, everyone is looking at Chuck. His breath hitches in his throat, like he’s going to start choking. His eyes flit from face to face, Jeff-Gina-Lex-Maxwell-Jasmine-Jeff-Gina—

Hie realizes he hasn’t said anything yet, and he’s halfway to hyperventilation. _Disgusted, disgusted, disgusteddisgusteddisgusted,_ his brain hammers at him.

He clears his throat. He cringes at the sound, too loud in the anticipating, quiet room. “I’m…Chuck, I’m 21. My goal for the day is to get some reading done. And you can probably guess why I’m here.”

Jeff takes this non-answer in stride. “Okay, so today, we’re going to continue with our discussion of drama therapy. Does anyone want to catch Chuck up on what we’ve covered thus far?”

“Drama therapy is when you use something like role-play, or reading a poem, or like telling a story about your life or trauma or something in your therapy.” Gina offers.

“Right. It’s a therapeutic modality that uses theatrical techniques and concepts in order to explore out inner lives and create positive change. Today, I want you all to write out the story of a time you were triggered to act on your problem behaviors. It can be any situation. Maybe the first time you engaged in self-harm, or a time when your behaviors were especially harmful to you or your relationships. The goal is to understand what your triggers are, what your emotional response is, and to maybe envision a more positive way we could have dealt with these feelings. Does everyone feel safe enough to start this activity today?”

Jeff pauses and gazes around the room. Jasmine, arms crossed over her chest, posture aggressively correct, drags a sandaled toe in a circle on the floor. Lex chews her chapped lower lip. But no objections. Chuck thinks he’d rather get a vasectomy during an earthquake than do this activity, but he’s not going to be the only one to voice any hesitation.

“Okay, so if no one has any questions, we’ll get started. We have 35 minutes to write, and when we meet again on Saturday, we’ll read our stories. Sound good?”

The group mutters their understanding vaguely. Jeff passes around a box of pencils (with no erasers, which is another loony bin rule Chuck doesn’t understand) and a pile of loose-leaf paper on clipboards. Everyone takes one and starts writing, some hesitantly, some furiously.

Chuck leans his clipboard against his leg and starts aimlessly doodling, trying to appear busy enough that no one bothers him. He wishes, for maybe the tenth time that day, that he were stoned, or bleeding, or so drunk he can’t see. He has no intention of actually starting the activity, but a story still pops into his head unbidden. The first time he ever hurt himself, far before he knew what he was doing or why.

* * *

Winter break sophomore year, he was staying in various Bass-owned hotels throughout Europe. His father gave him free rein as long as he put in appearances at a couple events (a gala for heart disease back in New York, a holiday dinner at Hélène Darroze in London.)

Him and a few other kids from New York, students at St. Jude’s and Buckley and Dalton and Dwight, had been partying in Berlin. When Chuck partied, he usually paid for the booze, the drugs, the dancers, then sat in a corner with a cognac. Knowing he made the party happen, that people sought him out for a good time, made him feel indispensable. He would get drunk enough to feel warm inside and stick his tongue in the mouth of any pretty thing that accepted his advances.

This time was different, though. A boy from Buckley had smuggled some E into the country on a jet, and even though Chuck had never done it before, he wasn’t going to be the only one not partaking.

“Just stay hydrated and don’t stick your dick in an electrical socket, and you’ll be fine. Although, if you wanna stick your dick in any of the other holes…” the boy from Buckley casts a significant glance at a gaggle of girls standing by the minibar: tall, cool, holding glasses of champagne. A few guys laugh.

Chuck drops a tab.

He wakes up the next morning remembering nothing but light, a happy smear of color across his temporal lobe.

He sits up and registers that the room he’s in isn’t his own. A nice room, but not the penthouse suite he’d been partying in. Where _was_ he? He searches his mind: he remembers dancing— or rather, jumping up and down, his lungs feeling expansive as sails, vaguely to the beat of the music. He thinks that, whoever he became in that neon-splattered nighttime, that person seemed like a pretty cool guy. A wave of mourning hits him, for that person, for all the joy he feels certain he experienced but can’t remember, and it knocks him back down to the bed. There’s a crumpled-up dress (black, bandage style, Neiman-Marcus off the rack) on the bed. He remembers a woman, maybe in her late 20s, at the bar on the ground floor of the hotel. Maybe it belonged to her, or maybe it belonged to one of the high school or college girls he’d invited to the penthouse. Both seemed plausible: from what he remembers, he wasn’t exactly refusing attention last night. (In hindsight he feels horribly embarrassed, he must have been so needy and out of control, but at the time he’d been so outside of himself that he’d forgotten to care. He desperately wants that feeling back.) The last threads of his high are fading fast, leaving in their wake a horrible sick feeling, a low tide that lays bare all the trash on the shore.

He rolls over to look for his phone, one hand groping vaguely for it without lifting his head to really look. The comedown is clamping down around him; a blue-black, drowning feeling. The memories of every horrible thing he’s ever said or done fight for his attention. He groans audibly. He wonders where his pants are.

He hears the shower shut off (the white noise in his mind was loud enough that he hadn’t registered the sound of running water) and a woman emerged. Sure enough, it was the 20-something from the bar. “It’s almost noon, by the way. In case you have work.” She takes her toothbrush out of her mouth and sits on the bed, one moisture-beaded leg swung over Chuck’s.

“Work,” he repeats. He suddenly, horribly resents this woman’s presence in his space, the steamy water running down her thighs, her presumption that he was an adult with work in the morning (and for all he knows, he had told her he was.)

“Yeah. It’s Friday.” She wrings out the ends of her hair into her towel. “Unless you have today off, because I can go again.” She grins at him.

Chuck feels sick. He feels like the cavernous dark blue feeling might swallow him up. “Friday?” he repeats. The date feels important but he can’t quite place why.

Then it hits him: he’s supposed to be in London tonight to meet his father. His heart kicks into high gear. He needs to get up, _now_ , needs to find his phone and his clothes and grab his bags and check out in time to get to the airstrip. He needs to catch the jet to London and be ready and presentable, preferably sober-seeming, by 7. But all he wants to do right now is shrug off this women, whoever she was, and sleep for about a year.

He forces himself to get up, finding his scattered clothes, and gets in the elevator to the penthouse half-dressed.

Upstairs, most of his friends have disappeared, and the ones that are left are sleeping it off on the floor or the chaise lounge. He nudges a boy from Dalton. “Thanks for waking me up.”

The boy, his blonde hair plastered across his cheek and forehead, is too drunk to understand sarcasm. “You’re welcome,” he mutters and nods back off. Chuck is picking his way through the wreckage of the suite for his bags, feeling halfway to tears. He was running late, and miserable and dehydrated and he felt dirty in ten different ways. He wants nothing more than to curl into a ball and not wake up until everything has sorted itself out. He comes across a few fallen room service trays, tipped over champagne flutes. He makes a half-hearted attempt to tidy up as he gathers up his stuff and heads to the bathroom.

He catches sight of his reflection in the mirror: circles under his eyes in an inflamed violet color, hair wildly askew, undershirt crooked with a blazer thrown haphazardly over it. He looks debauched and slightly pathetic, his breathing hard and his lips cracked. He looks down at what’s in his hands: his laptop and its charger, his shoes, a bundle of silverware from a room service tray. As if in a trance, he takes the wood-handled steak knife out from its white napkin. He unzips his pants and yanks them down around his hips. The only thing he’s thinking is that he can’t feel like this for one second longer, so low and gross and miserable. He needs the feeling to go away, _right now_ , so he puts the blade to his flesh. The knife isn’t sharp enough to cut on the first try, just to burn and show signs of beginning to break the skin. So he drags it, back and forth like a saw, across the skin of his hip, until it’s a bloodied, weeping mess.

When the job is done, he feels emptied out. Tired, numb, wrung-dry of every last fuck he could have given. He gets an espresso in the lobby and calls a cab.

(His dad gave him hell about being late and sloppy at dinner. But the burn where he’d cut pulls harder at him than his father’s words ever could. The hurt is exquisite, he doesn’t want to let it go for the far more ordinary pain he’s used to. In fact, he finds himself hoping his father will get mad enough to hit him, to add a different and more exciting pain to the bunch he’s already collected.)

* * *

“We’re out of time,” Jeff announces. “Would anyone like to go first next time? Or do we need more time to work on our stories?”

A few mutters as everyone is clearly eyeing the door. Chuck’s glad he’s not the only one who wants as much distance as possible from this group, this assignment, these people and these memories.

“Fine, I’ll just pick who goes first.” The mutters erupt into groans of annoyance. “See you all Saturday.”

He has lunch next, then downtime. He feels like he’s crawling out of his skin; there’s no way he’s going to the cafeteria and being around people, pretending to take an interest in the steamed vegetables and quinoa, or his book. They don’t take attendance at meals, so he just heads back to his room.

His bathroom door is open. He must have left it ajar after he took his morning shower, and a staff member hadn’t come by to lock it yet. He goes inside, closes the door behind him, and sits on the floor. He puts his face in his hands and sighs. He tries to extend his legs but the bathroom is too small. He only succeeds in knocking his shampoo off the ledge of the tub, which somehow makes him feel so much worse.

He stares at the shampoo bottle for a long time before mustering the will to put it back on the ledge. It seems like a herculean task. When he does pick it up, he notices the top has been flipped open and closed enough times that the plastic is weakening. He’s seized by a crazy idea.

He pulls and twists at the plastic, trying to get the flip-top to tear off. In desperation, he stands up and stomps on the top. a crack appears in the plastic. He stomps again, and a sliver of plastic goes flying. That will work well enough.

He uses the very sharpest bit of the plastic shard to scratch into his leg. He goes over the same strip of skin on his thigh over and over until he can see blood. Then he keeps going, dragging the plastic through the shallow-pooling blood and going deeper. When he tires himself out, he washes off the plastic shard, splashes some water on his hip, and crumbles up some of the brown paper towels next to the sink to staunch the bleeding. He has to fight to keep a conspicuous smile off of his face during downtime.

* * *

That afternoon, just before dinner, he has individual with Jackie. He knows she’s going to ask about SHOPA, and he doesn’t know how to get out of talking about the memories that resurfaced (or what he ended up doing about them). He walks into the session like a man to the firing squad.

“Hello, Chuck. How was your first meeting with the process addiction group?”

“We did drama therapy.” He says, with a tone that implies an eye roll.

“And how did you like that?”

“It wasn’t terribly compelling. I’m not a theater person. I may dress really well, but I’m not actually a friend of Liza.”

Jackie scrutinizes him, looking vaguely pissed off.

“I’v had sex with plenty of men, I’m allowed to make jokes like that.” He says, halfway as a joke and halfway to get her to stop looking at him like that.

“Have you ever tried not being a sarcastic little shit during therapy?”

“I have. Didn’t like it much.”

Jackie sighs and closes her notebook. “You’ve joked, stonewalled, walked out of, or otherwise jerked off through every single session we’ve had. Why are you even here?”

“You know why I’m here,” He says, feeling infinitely exhausted. He does not have the energy to talk about this right now.

“I know that you cut yourself. I know that you’re very sick and in a lot of pain. But as far as I can see, you have no interest in getting better. So why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” His voice turns caustic: the wall is up, and Asshole Mode has been fully engaged. 

“Because you could walk out right now, sign your 72-hour and be gone by the weekend. So why haven’t you?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Bullshit! There’s a reason why you’re here.” Her voice jumps up into a volume that’s nearly shouting; he grips the armrest to keep from flinching.

“I don’t pay you to get yelled at.” He tries to sound authoritative but he only succeeds in sounding sad and a little scared.

“I’ll say it one last time, and if you refuse to answer, this session is over: Why. Are. You. Here, Chuck?”

“Because if I leave I’ll be dead by morning! If I’m not around people, if I’m not _forced_ to be around them, I’ll find some room to lock myself in and I’ll put a blade to my wrist and I’ll keep slicing until I’m dead. Is that what you want to hear?”

Jackie nods slowly, solemnly. “Now you’ve said something honest. Finally, the real work can begin.”

* * *

Lily picks up the landline at the apartment. She doesn’t recognize the number, but she still picks up (Serena has a habit of losing her phone and forgetting to tell her mother. And she likes telling off the scam callers anyway.)

“This is the van der Woodsen-Humphrey residence. With whom am I speaking?”

“Lily?”

She recognizes that voice. She nearly drops the receiver. “Charles?”

She grips the phone with both hands and fumbles her way to a chair to sit down.

“Hi,” He manages.

“Are you alright? Where are you? Do you need me to come get you? Oh, Blair is going to be so relieved!”

“I’m okay, Lily. I’m safe. I’m at Heron Lake Wellness Center outside Ocala, Florida.”

“Wellness Center? Are you—“

“I’m here for…well, treatment. I’d rather not get into the details right now.”

 _Treatment?_ For what? Was he hurt? Had he tried to hurt himself? Had he overdosed? Gotten alcohol poisoning? Had a psychotic break? Her mom brain goes spiraling into a thousand possibilities, each more horrible than the last.

“Is everyone okay? How are you?” Chuck asks.

“I’m a lot better now that I’ve heard from you. And everyone else is…getting by. They miss you, Charles.”

“I’ll be back. Eventually. Once I’m better. But you can’t tell anyone where I am.”

“But everyone is worried sick about you. It would—“

“I’m serious, Lily. I’m not ready for them to know. _Please_ , don’t tell anyone.”

Lily chews the inside of her lip pensively. She wasn’t exactly a stranger to keeping things from her family, and the last thing she wanted was to drive Charles away. “Alright. If this is something you need.”

“Thank you.” She can hear his smile over the line— that small, tentative smile, the kind that says he can barely allow himself to be happy but he’s trying. “Well, I called to ask if you could check in on my dog? I left him at a dog hotel on the West Side—“

“Blair has your dog, darling.”

“ _Blair_? How on Earth did she find Monkey?”

Lily laughs. “It turns out Blair is quite the detective. She’s scoured every inch of the tri-state area for you. She found Monkey and took him home. I’m sure she’s taking very good care of him.”

Chuck goes so silent she thinks the call might have dropped.

“Charles? Honey?”

“Yeah. I’m here.” His voice is hoarse. “Um, I think I have to go. Can I ask a favor?”

“Anything, darling.”

“Can you send me some books? It’s a little boring around here.”

Lily glances over at her calendar. “You know what? I think I can do something even better. Does Heron Lake allow visitors?"


	9. PTSD? More like PT-SMD Am I Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait! i hope you all celebrated the new year with joy and relaxation <3

Blair asks Serena to go to the dog park with her and Dorota (which really means they sit on a bench and watch Dorota studiously avoid the Upper West Side dog moms as Monkey, tongue lolling, does laps around the dog run.)

It’s a classic New York winter day: freezing and vaguely wet, a bright crystalline sun shooting harsh dagger across the bleached-white sky. Blair is in a fur-line cloak and black sunglasses. She watches the clouds as she talks to Serena.

“It has come to my attention I’ve been a little bit…obsessive about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

“You mean Chuck?” Serena raises an eyebrow.

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, S! I’ve talked about him enough for about ten lifetimes.” She looks down at her gloved hands, then back up at the whitish late-winter sky. “I know I’ve driven you all crazy with my amateur Nancy Drew act. So I’m finally going to let him go. For good this time.”

“It’s okay, B. We understand. Although I think Lily was a little freaked out when you gave her the third degree.”

They both laugh. “How is Lily doing?” Blair sighs.

“I don’t know…she’s leaving for the Bahamas tonight. Alone.”

“That’s weird.”

“She’s looking at new vacation houses or something.”

“Well, I think that’s a very chic form of retail therapy.”

Serena laughs then tapers off into a sigh. “Chuck is basically her son. It’s hard for her to admit he didn’t want to say goodbye to her.”

“Maybe she’s just upset all three of her kids turned out a little crazy.” Blair smirks.

Serena laughs, her nose wrinkling in the way it does only when she’s truly delighted. “Hey! You’re forgetting about Scott. He’s pretty normal.”

“I stand corrected.” Blair folds her sunglasses and puts them into her clutch. “Seriously, don’t worry about her, S. She’s a real badass. She’ll be okay.”

“I know…” Serena grabs Blair’s hand. “Well, at least we’re pretty sure he’s...safe. You know, _alive_. I wasn’t so sure he was after—“

“After?” Blair looks at Serena with perhaps a bit too much interest, her swearing-off of Chuck tossed aside just like that.

Serena looks at the ground for a long time. She presses her lips together. She looks back up at Blair but doesn’t quite make eye contact. “Just…after I learned he was in therapy. That’s all.”

“Whatever, let’s not talk about him.” Blair puts on a fake smile and shakes her head, as though to dislodge any remaining thoughts of him.

Serena lowers her voice to a comforting murmur. “It’s okay to still feel things for him. Even if you don’t want to talk about him, or if you guys never see each other again.”

Blair stands up abruptly. “I think I see Dorota being dragged into a conversation about gluten-free bagels. Let’s go rescue her.”

* * *

Chuck, having now committed to this whole taking-therapy-seriously thing, realizes he has to tell Jackie that he cut himself after his first meeting of SHOPA. He tells her the whole story, from his ecstasy trip in Berlin, cutting himself with hotel silverware, his father tearing him a new asshole for being late to inner, all the way to his freakout in the bathroom and him improvising a blade out of shards of plastic (he’s grateful he didn’t use his real razor, because he’s not quite ready to admit to bringing it.)

Jackie puts down her pen and takes a deep breath. “Well, I’ll need you to go see the nurse after this, make sure you didn’t do any real damage.”

Chuck does his best not to squirm at the prospect of having his scars ogled at again. He nods.

“Am I in…I don’t know, _therapy jail_ now?”

Jackie laughs. “No, Chuck. I’m proud of you.”

“ _Proud_ of me? For doing the one thing I came here to _stop_ doing?”

“The only reason you didn’t try to cut before is because you were too numb to even feel urges. This is a good sign; it means you’re letting feelings in.”

“Oh.” Chuck isn’t quite sure what to make of that; he’d sort of thought of every day at Heron Lake as a test— not that he’d been acing it thus far, but he thought drawing blood was definitely an automatic F.

“I would like to speak about this memory that came up during group. You mentioned that you might have had sex with someone considerably older when you were intoxicated.”

“Not just when I was intoxicated. I have plenty of game, sober or not.”

“I don’t doubt it. But were these sexual partners aware that you were a minor?”

“Sometimes. A lot of them just didn’t ask. It’s not like a mommy issues thing—not like my friend Nate.”

Jackie raises her eyebrows.

“My friend Nathaniel’s mother—well, she makes the iceberg that sunk the Titanic look warm and nurturing. And he got pimped out by a cougar when we were in high school. Long story, very Freudian.”

“Would you say that those kinds of relationships were normalized in your social circle?”

“What, because it’s illegal? For teenage boys, drug laws, age of consent laws, and dress codes are all the same: more suggestions than hard and fast rules.”

“Do you think these…sexual encounters were traumatizing for you?”

“ _Traumatizing_? You realize I wasn’t in a war zone, I was just learning the ways of the world from my au pair.” A half-smile hovers on his lips, as though he feels he should be laughing but isn’t sure what’s funny anymore.

“Chuck, I think your psychiatrist should do an official screening with you for post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“I don’t understand why that would be necessary.”

“You had a relationship with your parents that was characterized by neglect and emotional abuse. Your uncle betrayed and manipulated you while he was your legal guardian. You were in a car accident that left you in a coma. You’ve had sexual relationships where you were either too young or too inebriated to consent. Your girlfriend was kidnapped the night you had sex for the last time. These are all traumatizing events. Even in the story you just told me about the first time you self-harmed, you mentioned wishing your father would hit you. Was that a problem in your house growing up?”

Chuck shakes his head. “My father backhanded me a few times. Only when I was practically asking for it. But…it was almost like hitting me was too intimate for him. He could barely stand to touch me.”

“I think you have a very ingrained habit of downplaying the things that have happened to you— the things people have _done to you_ , Chuck. Things that you in no way asked for or deserved.” Jackie holds his gaze with unbroken, intense eye contact. “I think that’s why you’re always terrified of being left, why you’re hypersexual, why you push people away— that’s probably why you refused to let your stepmother come here.”

“I actually called her yesterday and told her to come.”

Jackie smiles softly. “I’m glad, Chuck. But you’re not going to deflect this conversation. You skipped your trauma process group yesterday, and I really think it’s important that you go.”

“I have to go to SHOPA _and_ the trauma group?”

“I know; it’s kind of like telling you that you have to get a prostate exam and a root canal in the same week. But you’re here to do difficult work.”

“At least I could enjoy a prostate exam,” Chuck mumbles.

Jackie laughs. “That’s all our time for today. I’ll see you on Monday.” Chuck stands to leave.

“And Chuck? I really am proud of you. And I know your family will be, too.”

* * *

He gets dragged out of downtime (he was begrudgingly playing Life with Dave, who he suspected was letting him win) by a staff member to go to the nurse’s office.

The nurse on duty is the same one who checked him out on his first night. She smiles at him, but she’s clearly tired. She gestures for him to hop up on the exam table.

“What happened, honey?”

“Bad memories.” He says vaguely as he rolls his boxers up to show her the mess of scratches.

She makes a sad clucking sound. “Well, next time talk to someone before you go hurting yourself, huh?” It's bland advice, not meant so much to be useful as to distract him as she runs an alcohol swab over his skin.

“I don’t think I asked your name last time I was here?”

“Oh.” he looks up, surprised. Her eyes are a comforting shade of watery blue. Chuck feels a sudden ache for Lily (and for Elizabeth, and for forehead kisses, the kind moms give in movies but which he has very little real life experience with.) “I’m Maryanne. And you’re Charles, right?”

He opens his mouth to correct her, then doesn’t. He nods, smiles.

She returns to her gauze and antibacterial. “So, how did you do these?”

“Smashed a shampoo bottle and used the pieces.”

“You kids sure are creative.” She laughs; it’s the kind of dark humor Chuck appreciates. “Well, you’re all set. Have a good one, Charles.” She presses her hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

* * *

Lily is standing in the carpeted visitors’ room, which is a scattering of plastic tables and chairs, and a few cushions on the floor. She’s looking uncharacteristically unsure of herself in pumps and a a 1999 Comme Des Garçons cashmere shawl coat that she’s holding closed around her neck with white knuckles. She looks around, then catches Chuck’s eyes. (Chuck was looking more than a little unsure himself, in the nicest sweater he packed.) She breaks out into the most incredible grin, and runs to Chuck, arms open.

“Charles!” He sinks into her arms. He’d forgotten how it felt, being touched by someone who loved him. She lets him go too soon. “Oh, you look wonderful.” She examines his face, which she hasn’t seen without dark circles or bloodshot eyes in so long.

She leads him to one of the visitors’ tables. She sits and leans her chin on her fists. “So? How are you doing?”

“I’m—okay. I’m doing a lot better, actually.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she says quietly. It’s clear that she’s waiting for more information.

“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here?”

“I’ll admit, I’m a bit curious.” She smiles at him.

Chuck rolls up the sleeve of his angora sweater, up past the elbow. There’s a small smattering of scars from his left shoulder down onto his bicep. He extends his arm towards Lily.

“Oh, Charles,” she says sadly. She reaches out with one shaky hand and traces an old cut, which is a raised, shiny white. “How long have you been—?”

“About four years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Chuck shrugs. He picks at his cuticles. “What did you tell Serena and Eric?”

“I’m in the Bahamas, shopping for a new beach house.”

“Well, I’d say this place is just as glamorous.” Chuck half-smiles.

“I almost forgot; I brought you some books.” Lily reaches into her bag (a huge Michael Kors leather tote) and pulls out a stack of books. A gilt-edged copy of the _Decameron_ , bound in green leather, a few J.D. Salinger paperbacks, and—surprisingly—a thick, cheap romance novel. The kind you can buy in a drug store, with two white people almost-kissing on the cover.

“The _Decameron_ is so you can look smart, of course— and they’re actually lovely stories. Salinger has always been a favorite of mine,” She holds up the copy of Nine Stories, which is yellowed and soft with age. “This was mine in high school, and there’s a lot of very silly notes in the margins. Hopefully that will be amusing for you.”

“And how abut—“ Chuck picks up the romance novel. “ _Enchantment on Cape Cod_?”

Lily breaks out into a wide smile. “I picked it up a the airport bookstore. These kinds of novels were all I read when I was in the hospital in Paris. I gave some to Eric when he was at the Ostroff Center. I thought maybe it would be funny to bing one to you, too.”

Lily starts fidgeting with her hands. “Not your typical family tradition, I guess.” She sighs and smiles sadly.

Chuck picks up one of the books and pretends to read the back cover. His eyes, without any permission from him, are swimming with tears.

“I didn’t know how long you were going to be here, so I brought a lot of books. If it’s too many, I can take some back. Or if you aren’t interested, I can bring other ones— I’m staying in a hotel a few towns over, I’m sure I can find a bookstore.”

“No! I mean, it’s okay. Don’t take them back. This is…well,it’s very nice, Lily. Thank you.” Chuck clears his throat.

A staff member comes up behind Chuck. “Jackie is ready for you two.”


	10. The Miraculous Return of Chuck Bass

**12 Weeks Later**

Chuck doesn’t tell anyone he’s back; he lets Gossip Girl do that for him. He flies commercial into JFK. By the time the cab lets him out in front of Dean and Deluca’s so he can get a bagel before returning home, his phone is chirping with a Gossip Girl alert. A picture of him, wheeling his suitcase to the curb, arm up to hail a cab. _Long Time, No C. Chuck Bass finally spotted, getting off a red eye and back into the Big Apple. Anyone want to place bets on where he’s been?_

He goes to the Empire first. He makes a beeline to the bed and lays down, fully clothed, just relishing the feeling of his own room. He hadn’t made any plans for this day— Lily knew he was coming home, he’d called her two days ago, and she offered to pick him up from the airport. He’d declined, but she was probably expecting him to stop by and see her. But first, he needed to unpack and drink some coffee and put on clean clothes.

He phones Lily after he takes a long, hot shower. “Charles! You’ve landed! Are you doing alright?”

“Just fine. Is Serena there? I’d like to come see you.”

“Well, she’s at work, but Eric is home from school for the day and Rufus is making waffles.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow then. When Eric goes back to campus and Serena is at work.”

“Don’t you want to see them?”

“I’m not quite ready to explain my absence to them.”

“Isn’t that something you and Jackie talked about? How to talk to your family about your treatment?”

A knot forms in his throat. “Well— yes. Yes we did.” In truth, they hadn’t had time to really discuss it. Just as soon as the topic was broached, Chuck had—

“Will you come over if I promise Eric won’t pry?”

He doesn’t know how to wiggle his way out of this one, and after all the time he’d spent with Lily on her repeated trips down to Heron Lake, he _did_ really want to see her.

“I’ll be over in an hour.”

* * *

Blair gets the blast, and practically drops her phone. Chuck was back. Which meant he hadn’t run away to start a new life. And he hadn’t-- done what she’d thought he’d done to himself. It takes less than five minutes for her phone to go wild with texts from Serena, Nate, even Penelope, asking if she’d seen the news. She doesn’t have the energy to respond— the relief crashed over her, draining her of every ounce o fight in her body. She feels like she could sleep for a year. Instead, she picks her phone back up.

Her hands shake as she zooms in on the pictures of Chuck. He looks good— he’s in one of his signature suits, immaculately-folded pocket square and all, and he looks like he’s gained some weight. Still dark circles under his eyes, but less the weary wine-colored ones he had when things were really bad, just slight shadows that meant he’d had a few sleepless nights. But overall, he looked _good_. Her body aches for him, for a kiss, to bury her face in his chest or slot a thigh between his legs as they lay in bed wearing silk pajamas. But she also knows she can’t just run to him— he disappeared without warning for nearly five months, and who knows what had happened to him while he was gone? Or if he might just disappear again? There were too many unanswered questions, and too many ways for him to hurt her again. Better to keep her distance. If he wanted to see her, to _be with_ her, he knew where to find her.

The only thing about keeping her distance is that it hurt like scraping the marrow from her bones with a dull knife.

On the other hand, something becomes immediately and painfully clear to her as she gazes at his photo. A mystery solves itself as she looks in his eyes, all the pieces sliding themselves into place.

She picks up the phone and calls Nate. “I know where’s Chuck’s been for the past five months.”

* * *

Lily hugs him the second he enters the door. “You look wonderful! Even better than the last time I saw you.” She says in a warm but rushed whisper.

Lily had come back down to Heron Lake a handful of times after her initial stay in Florida. Chuck had eventually gotten cleared for outdoor activities, and his skin was golden brown and a little freckled across the nose from hours spent kayaking with Dave and doing equine therapy in the sun.

“Rufus! Eric! Put down the waffle iron and say hello to Charles!” She calls across the foyer of the penthouse. (She had, in an impressive pretend-shock voice, told Rufus and Eric that Chuck had called to say he was back in the city and wanted to come over. She’d made them promise not to ask any invasive questions. More out of curiosity than anything else, the two had agreed he could come right over.)

Eric surprises Chuck by hugging him. Well, less a hug and more a blind throw of one arm around Chuck that lasted no longer than 5 seconds, motivated by a sort of bitter fondness. He rubs Eric’s shoulder before he can completely pull away, and they share a tight smile.

Chuck had changed into an oxford and chinos with a black leather belt (this was the first time he’d worn a belt in months, and it feels like a small luxury. He feels similarly about pencils with erasers, laptops, and shoes with laces.) Eric thinks he looks more present, somehow, more substantial, and the laidback clothes suit him, along with his unseasonable tan.

Rufus gives him an awkward clap on the shoulder, and they offer him waffles and something to drink (he hasn’t had alcohol in months, and he doesn’t want to get wasted off a single bloody mary in front of Lily, so he asks for an orange juice.) Chuck smiles a small smile and keeps the conversation off of himself; asking Eric about school and Rufus about bands he’s managing.

It’s surreal, seeing Chuck laughing and calm and sober, eating and drinking something that isn’t alcohol, attentively listening even as Eric, still a little in shock, stumbles over his stories about art history classes and roommates.

When Chuck checks his watch, thanks Rufus and Lily for their hospitality (imagine that— Chuck Bass _thanking_ someone) and says he better get going, Lily hugs him and whispers “I’m so proud of you.”

Chuck turns his face from hers so she can’t see his reaction.

Eric offers to walk him to the door.

While Chuck had been sitting there, eating waffles, Eric couldn’t help but wonder where he’d been. He has a hunch, since there’s really only one place people disappear to looking like hell and come back from, suntanned and sober. And he’d seen his mom pack a cheesy paperback romance novel on one of her trips to “the Bahamas”.

“Were you in rehab?” He blurts out.

Chuck stops dead in his tracks and turns to Eric.

“What makes you think that?”

“You disappeared, you come back looking—no offense— a lot better. And mom bought one of her drugstore novels. She only does that when one of her kids is in psychiatric treatment.“

Chuck’s silence is enough of an answer.

“So that’s why you didn’t have a drink?”

“Not that kind of rehab,” Chuck says, a touch quiet.

“Oh.” A memory surfaces. A year or so ago, when Jenny was still living here, she was sketching a bias-cut gown for Eleanor, and she couldn’t find her pencil sharpener. Eric didn’t think anything of it until a day later, when he saw it in the wastebasket, just a plastic shell without its blade. From his time at the Ostroff Center, he knew what that meant. He had confronted Jenny, asking her if she was cutting herself. Jenny was so confused and indignant he’d convinced himself he’d imagined the whole thing.

But he hadn’t. Chuck had been in and out of the van der Woodsen apartment around that time. The missing blade, the rehab stay, Chuck’s long sleeves even though it was summer

“You self-harm, don’t you?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re far too smart for your own good?”

* * *

“What do you mean?” Nate demands.

“Remember what the private investigator said? That Chuck was asking how hard it would be to track down someone in rehab? What if he wasn’t talking about some rival; he was talking abut _himself_? Think about it: he disappears some place he wouldn’t want us to know about. He comes back with a suitcase and a tan, so it’s not exactly like he was kidnapped.”

“Well, that’s good news, right? For one thing, that would mean he’s sober. For another, it means he didn’t leave because he wanted to.”

Blair is silent.

“You still there?”

“Doesn’t he know he could have told me? _Anything_. Anything he felt, I would try to understand. He’s my whole heart, Nate.” Her voice breaks off into a noiseless sob. “He could have told me. I would have understood.”

“He loves you, Blair. He didn’t stop loving you, or any of us, just because he didn’t tell us.”

Blair wants to tell him that it’s _different_ with her, that she’d been the only person to save Chuck from himself for so long, that she’d thought he had no secrets from her. She didn’t have nay secrets from him; after all, he’d been the only one that had made her feel like she was worth saving. They were fractured and incomplete in all the same ways, and she had thought that he knew that.


	11. Staying Clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is both late and short, and for that I'm sorry!!! Just very busy

Chuck assumes Eric will tell Serena. And in a way, he’s grateful. It will save him the embarrassment of having to tell her, with her endless positivity (and her already less-than-stellar opinion of him), about his stay at Heron Lake. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could see Lily again so soon. Not when she kept looking at him with pride in her eyes— pride he was painfully aware he didn’t deserve.

he next day, he knows he has to continue this reunion tour he’s started, but he’s quite honestly dreading it. He has to go see Blair eventually, especially since she has Monkey, and he’s dying to see the dumb mutt. But not yet. He’s not ready to face her. Nate he’s not so worried about, since their ritual for dealing with any and all emotionally weighty topics is well established: they get drunk at a nice bar, talk big game about picking up women, and then fall asleep on the couch (more often than not, with Nate hoarding all the blankets and with his feet on top of Chuck.) But then again, he’s not sure that’s a pattern he should fall back into. And who knew if Humphrey even wanted to see him in the first place?

He digs around in the suitcase he brought back from Heron Lake until he finds the letter Dave sent him (he was discharged almost three weeks before Chuck, putting him in the miserable position of having to make new friends.) At the bottom of the letter was his phone number. Chuck dials the Boston area code on the landline at the Empire, wrapping the cord around his fingers idly, laying back in bed.

“David Falco speaking.”

“Guess who.”

“Chuck, you son of a bitch! They let you out? What were they thinking?”

Chuck’s face splits into a grin. “Jackie’s judgement must have been way off. How’s the new job?”

“Well, the pay’s good, my office is big, and the work is mostly taking people out to dinner. But—“ he lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “I’m hearing rumors that the CEO is crazy.”

Chuck laughs. “The phrase ‘takes one to know one’ comes to mind. Are you still...?“

“Clean and sober, sir.”

“Good, good.”

“And, uh, you?”

“I haven’t touched a blade since I discharged. Although, it’s just now hitting me that I have to dispose of the blades I still have stashed in my house.”

“Shit. Did you and Jackie plan for that?”

“Not exactly. Things got…well, _messy_ toward the end.”

Dave lets out a steady stream of air. “Sorry, man. The transition back into the real world is always rough, especially after an admission that long. If you need some support when you go to get rid of those blades, give me a call. Okay?”

“Thanks, man.”

“I gotta get back to work. Um. I love you, man.”

Chucks heart stops, then picks up again, double-time. “Yeah, me too, Dave. Stay safe.”

* * *

Dan calls Blair, ostensibly to ask if she wants to see a movie at the Quad, but it was a fairly transparent cover.

“Cut to the chase, Humphrey: yes I saw the GG blast, no I haven’t seen Chuck yet. And I don’t want to.”

“You’ll have to return the dog at some point. Unless you want a custody battle on your hands.”

“If he wants it that bad, he can call Dorota.”

“Aren’t you at least a little relieved?”

Blair’s stony silence rings back through the phone.

“I mean, for all we knew, he had started a new life in Montana, or something. Actually, before we realized he boarded Monkey, I was positive he was dead. And we still haven’t explained why--“ He stops himself suddenly, snapping his jaw shut so fast he could have bit clean through his tongue. _Shit_. He’d almost blurted out what he knew abut the blood-stained handkerchief. This was all Blair’s fault, she _knows_ he can’t handle awkward silences-- 

“Explained what?”

“Nothing. I was just babbling. Thinking out loud, you know. And you never told me whether you want to catch that movie—“

“Explained. What. Humphrey?” She says very carefully, very slowly.

“You can, under no circumstances, tell Serena that you know what I’m about to tell you,” He begins.

When he’s done explaining that Serena found a bloody handkerchief in Chuck’s room and made him promise not to tell anyone about it, she calmly thanks him then promptly hangs up. (Presumably, to emit a scream of rage loud enough to frighten all the birds out of Central Park.)

* * *

It’s a few days before Chuck works up the nerve to see Nate. He doesn’t know if Nate is mad at him, but if he waits any longer to pay him a visit, he definitely will. He’s been home for almost a week but honestly, it doesn’t feel like home without Nate. So he calls him.

“Guess who.”

“Chuck?”

“Last time I checked.”

“I heard you were back in town. You have— well, a lot of explaining to do.”

“I know. You want to get lunch? My treat, any place you want.”

“Naturally, I’m ordering the most expensive booze they have.”

“Meet me at the Empire?”

Nate waits in the lobby and sends a message up to the penthouse (this breaks Chuck’s heart, just a little, because just a few months ago Nate wouldn’t have hesitated to swing by his suite without announcing himself, secure in his place in Chuck’s life. The thought stings, and his mind flashes briefly and traitorously to the blades still socked away in his top drawer.)

Chuck hovers a few paces away, unsure how to greet his friend who feels, improbably, like a stranger to him right now. Nate instinctually goes in for a brief hug, which grows awkward the second it’s initiated.

“Well, for someone who everyone thought was dead, you look great.”

A brief smile. He clears his throat.“Shall we?”

After they’ve ordered, they lapse into a silence that is not entirely uncomfortable.

“I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah?” Nate raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah. Every time I see a shampoo commercial, I think of you.”

“You’ve got to deal with your jealousy toward my hair’s natural shine, man.” He replies, laughing.

They both start laughing, that kind of best-friend laughter where you’re making eye contact the whole time and it’s mostly funny because the other person finds it funny. People start to stare, and Nate tries to smother his laughter in his sparkling water. Unsuccessfully. He early spit-takes, which starts them off laughing again.

Nothing has been solved— Chuck hasn’t even told him where he was— but this feels like proof that things between them will heal. They would have to.

When the laughter dies down, Nate sighs. “I texted. When I saw you got back, I mean.”

“Yeah, I changed my number.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I was in a bit of a rush when I took off. DIdn’t get the company to suspend my service.”

“So this is the part where you tell me where the fuck you were, right?”

Chuck sighs. “I guess it is.”

Their entrees arrive, which gives him a moment to collect his thoughts. (He thanks the waiter, which is new. It hits Nate strangely, proof that something within his friend has really, truly changed. Maybe for the better, but certainly not the same Chuck he knew.)

“I was at a psychiatric facility called Heron Lake in Florida.”

“Oh.”

“For the past few years, I’ve hurt myself. On purpose. The winter of sophomore year, I cut myself. I chalked it up to a weird reaction to taking ecstasy, and didn’t do it again for a long time. Then, I would get into these fights, or I’d break a bottle and cut my palms on the glass, or I’d punch myself in the stomach until I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know why I was doing it. Then, when I broke up with Blair, things were just so… dark, and I needed something more. More pain. And I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing the scars, so I started cutting again. And didn’t stop. Actually, it got worse. And I was…” Chuck feels like he’s been talking for years, and he’s avoiding Nates eyes, and his throat is suddenly quite dry so he takes a swig of his mimosa. He takes a deep breath and plunges on. “I was scared I was going to go too far. That some maid from the Empire was going to find me, all alone, with my blade on the floor and my blood soaking the mattress. So I had to get out.”

“Shit.” Nate says slowly. “Shit, Chuck. I wish you’d told me. Not just that you were going away, and not just that you were…cutting yourself. That you were in that much pain. I would’ve…well, I don’t know, but I would’ve done something. And I wouldn’t have been so massively pissed at you for the past five months.”

Chuck shrugs.

“You know, Blair actually basically guessed where you were.”

“Did she?” Chuck takes another sip of his mimosa, smiling faintly to himself.


End file.
